


Across the Continent, We Clash

by brokenmemento



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Divergent Timelines, F/F, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Set after episode six, Yennefer battles with the result of tangling with the djinn and Geralt. Trying to circumvent its effects, she tries to find other avenues to staunch her building chaos.orWhat if Yennefer and Tissaia had begun a physical relationship in the last part of season one?
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 70
Kudos: 177





	1. One or The Agreement

**Author's Note:**

> Look, for once I don't know, okay? Lol. This is really turning out to be unlike anything I've written for them. So far, it's less heartfelt and more...hedonistic? I'm not even sure this is something that I can do well, but I thought I'd put it out there and see what you all thought. If anyone will be honest with me, it's all of you.

_“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_

//-//

Once upon a time, there was a hunchbacked girl from a pig farm in Vengerberg. An unwashed, unloved thing that spent her days watching the world go by, trying to get along as best she could in a space that was unforgiving. 

From this pig farm, she was plucked by a small, severe (beautiful) sorceress who was almost as cold as her name of de Vries. The girl was taken by the woman with lightning in her eyes to a great school overlooking the cliffs of the sea. 

There, she learned of magic. Of an even greater degree of failure. Of an even deeper despair than being absent of affection and tenderness. She was shown the way unkind events can harden the skin, harden the heart. 

Because no, this is no fairy tale with a happy end. At least not the way the hunchback girl saw it then. Because even though her spine has straightened now and her beauty shines from the raven of her tresses to the amethyst of her eyes, from the slope of her breasts to the curve of her thighs, she’s still got two twin white gashes across her wrists. There are scars everywhere. 

And now? Now she’s tied to a witcher by a fucking djinn. Does this sound like a poem or song that lovers write of? Of the grandness of being tied together by destiny when the choice was robbed from her yet again. 

So Yennefer drinks and eats and fucks her way across the Continent because somewhere along the way, someone stole the quill from under her nose, robbed her of being the author of her own tale. 

She looks for the magic to undo what’s been done, a way to strip the ink from the page. The longer she searches, the longer the ache expands like a blot blooming black on parchment the more it sits. 

Yennefer knows she’s spiraling, her chaos out of control. But she wants to rip whatever the djinn has done out of her, shed the skin of it or the soul or whatever other part it’s attached itself to. She wants to bleed it away, to leech it from the very pores of her body. 

All of her life, since that blasted pig farm, she’s been trying to gain control. Since those stys, she’s been grasping with fingertips to gain purchase. Now they’re just torn and bloody from trying to hang on most of the time. 

The anger she feels could rip the world apart, burn everything up completely. It’s these emotional vapors she rides on, these wayward things she portals into Aretuza feeling. 

The Rectoress will never know what hit her. 

//-//

Once upon a time, Tissaia de Vries had a normal life. A calm life. A predictable life that she’d become accustomed to as a part of The Gift and the Art, as a member of The Chapter. As a Rectoress at the esteemed school of Aretuza.

She traversed the Continent to bring girls back into the walls of the school so that they might have a way to control the contorted chaos that lived inside of them, to give them a chance to live instead of letting it destroy them from the inside to the out.

For a while, it worked. Beautifully so. Aretuza grew in esteem and Tissaia became known as a Madam of similar praise. Not one of her decisions were questioned, not one defied or disobeyed.

But also once upon a time, there had been a curious and electric set of purple eyes staring up at her from the ground. And from that moment on, nothing had been the same.

//-//

She’s not seen her since Rinde. Because that’s how things work since the woman’s ascension: she comes and goes like a storm. 

Seeing her in that small town had been a mistake, but Tissaia had felt her blip back into existence, her chaos signature as detectable as if she’d been standing right next to her. She’d had to take the chance. But something changed in that room that day. Yennefer was a knife edge, gleaming but sharp. The malleable girl from the farm was gone. 

So it’s no wonder they’ve not spoken in the month since Tissaia had paid her a visit. Before, they had gone years without so much as a word between one another. This is no different, she’s sure. 

If Yennefer’s chaos had been overwhelming then, that doesn’t even describe the half of it when Tissaia feels it crackle across time and space, sending her to her knees and raking her hands across the contents of her desk while desperately trying to stay upright. 

In all of her years, she’s never felt anything like this. Nothing as strong or as potent. Nothing so filled to the brim and as dangerous as what she feels suffocating Yennefer’s body. Which, if the staggering sensation is any indication, is very near. 

Tissaia just manages to rise to her feet and clean the detritus from the floor when the air leaves her lungs, as if she has been socked in the gut. No matter any other mage’s reaction to Yennefer’s flurry approaching. Tissaia knows from feeling alone it’s directed at her. 

There are no words of salutation when Yennefer pulls open the door, shuts it with the same gusto she entered. Her mind is erratic just like her body and Tissaia has to work against the onslaught of it. 

“I feel as if I’m going to combust,” Yennefer paces, her long dress sweeping the floor as she walks. “It’s as if my body, my soul, are on fire and I’ve done everything I know to get some relief, but there is none to be had.”

“What are you talking about, Yennefer?” Tissaia holds her side with one hand and uses her desk to lean against with the other. 

“There must be a way to undo what’s been done,” Yennefer rushes out, squaring up to Tissaia’s form. “Let’s have it. Pull it out of me or...whatever it is that must be done.”

“I’m likely to never know what it is you want me to do if you don’t settle your mind or your mouth one. Your chaos is suffocating,” the Rectoress tries to level her own breathing. 

“A djinn, Tissaia. A fucking djinn that hooked it claws into me or I into it. Either way, neither of us won and the one looking on has had the last laugh on us both.” She loosens the cords at the breast of her dress, undoing them swiftly and ripping them open to expose the curve of her chest. 

Tissaia averts her gaze, the not so subtle swell of them more than she should be seeing. Moving her hand from her hip to her forehead, she keeps her eyes on the floor. 

“He bound it to me, to us, and I can’t trust my own heart anymore. It’s been turned into a liar in my own body, whispering impossible things of love and devotion. All of which I know are through no decision of mine. You must know of a way to fix this. You’re the most powerful woman on the Continent,” Yennefer pleads as she steps closer. 

This does cause Tissaia’s eyes to raise. “The last time I saw you, you told me your womb is beyond my scope and the next, you’re begging me to sever an invisible bond between you and another life. I cannot keep up with this back and forth.”

Yennefer’s chest is heaving, no doubt from the cork she’s managed to place on her bottle. Tissaia can feel her straining against the restraint she’s having to exert. The energy she’s having to expend to hold back. 

But that’s a double-edged sword too. For the longer she stays bottled, the closer she becomes to exploding. Tissaia reaches out and grabs the ties of Yennefer’s dress, wraps her fingers around the cords, and tugs her to where their bodies are almost touching. 

She watches as Yennefer’s eyelids flutter, can feel the heat radiating off of her skin. There’s a sheen to it, prickles of perspiration above her lip, and her mouth hangs open panting ragged breath. 

“What has been done to you?” Tissaia whispers incredulously. 

It’s a question not meant to be answered but one to get the wheels working in her own mind. Trying to find some other solution than the answer glaringly apparent: there is nothing that can be done. 

“Nothing takes the edge off, nothing,” Yennefer practically whines. “But I’ll not succumb to satiating this by letting him have his way. I’d rather search the world over for something to do away with this than to ever give him an ounce of what he’s taken from me.”

Though the scamper of Yennefer’s thoughts is hard to glean anything from, Tissaia manages to get a name: Geralt. Little else can be taken from the sole thread. 

Yennefer’s shaking hands come to grip either side of Tissaia’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, for Rinde. For more. But I feel as though I’ll die from this. I’ve tried everything to get rid of these feelings but nothing removes them at all.”

“Another binding could extricate the original spell, but I feel as if you’d be hard-pressed to find a djinn a second time. The first surely was a fluke, at best,” she finds herself saying. 

There’s not an ounce of magic to prove the idea would ever work. But by the look on Yennefer’s face, the anguish in it, that idea offers no hope either. 

“Even if I could manage to locate another djinn, I’ve no one to bind myself to. Shit, Tissaia. I should have listened to you in Rinde. You warned me. Not about this, but I was heedless and shoved your advice to the side. I have been incredibly foolish.” 

Oh, she looks incredibly young for all of her 65 years. Was Tissaia ever this wild? It’s been so long since she was Yennefer’s age, the days are but fog in her mind. She fists the cords tighter, inhales and exhales to gather herself. 

Yennefer, seeming to understand, picks up on the technique and somehow tamps her chaos to a level where the two of them aren’t gasping for air. 

“Why do you feel this way? I don’t understand it,” Tissaia says with a shake of her head. (She still hasn’t let go of Yennefer. There’s no explanation why) 

“When I say I’ve tried everything, I do mean everything. Spirit and feast, bodies of all kinds. None could even begin to quell the effects of the djinn, of my lack of surrender to it. As of now, I’ve sworn it all off completely,” Yennefer puffs out a bit of air. 

Tissaia actually laughs. Honest to gods barks out a noise that sends Yennefer’s face contorting in anger and trying to wrench away. 

“I’ll not stay here and have you laugh about this in my face,” Yennefer jerks away. Just as her portal pops, Tissaia gets ahold of herself.

“You’ll die without my help.” While she is sure of it, Tissaia is also not exactly sure how she can lend aid to this unique issue either. 

The portal closes and Yennefer turns back around. Her blazing eyes fix Tissaia with a look. “I don’t know what to do anymore.” She steps closer again. Tissaia fights for an answer inside herself. “What do you propose?”

Tissaia holds a hand up and admits the truth with a sigh. “There are no answers to be had within me. I have nothing else to propose to a woman who has tried everything.” Her brow creases in sympathy then and she relays the depth of that to Yennefer with her own look. 

But something wistful, pensive, solemn takes hold on Yennefer’s face. It’s like a tap being turned off, of it being halted. Tissaia can practically see the chaos stall in Yennefer’s body. 

“I haven’t tried everything,” Yennefer murmurs out. Her eyes flick up and into focus. “I haven’t tried you.”

“What?” It’s a strangled thing when it comes out but nothing else can be managed when Yennefer is holding her by both arms. 

“Here is my proposition. I know it’s wild and willful, just like myself. But Tissaia, you’re the only one I know that can handle the level of my chaos as it sits inside me now.” Yennefer tries to steady her voice. Tissaia actually sees her working through it, trying to garner the courage to ask. “Give me an outlet for this. For what I’m feeling and shoving away. Take it and bend it so that it’s bearable. If anyone can do it, it’s you.”

“What you’re asking…”

“Is something I’ve no idea how to go about. Not with you. I’ve had a great deal of the Continent between my thighs, trying to find someone to keep me from feeling like bursting.”

“No, Yennefer. You’re confused, distorted by your chaos. You’re not thinking clearly,” Tissaia shakes her head. 

“You’ll deny me then?” Yennefer purses her lips. In anger. 

“I…”

Yennefer doesn’t wait for an answer. She conjures a portal and dashes through it. Her resolution is not in her hands either, leaving her empty.

Tissaia hangs her head and presses a hand against her heart. Once upon a time, she knew exactly what to do. Now, she has no explanations that feel right to speak at all.


	2. Two or Clash 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So...NSFW? Yeah, not safe for work. None of these ensuing chapters will be.

_“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.” — Alice Walker, The Color Purple_

//-//

She really doesn’t intend to go back, not after Tissaia’s rebuff at her proposition. And really, Yennefer can’t blame the woman. It’s not as if she has come to terms with what she’s asked of her former mentor any more than she’s stopped being embarrassed for ever considering it an option. 

Which, she assumes, Tissaia wouldn’t have liked the alternate plan either-to suggest the rectoress and she go find the djinn in order to weave Geralt out. At least that would have been her choice. And choosing Tissaia, for as infuriating as she is, is more bearable than being tied to someone who has but a five word vocabulary, most consisting of grunts. 

So really, it’s her own foolish choice to be sitting in Tissaia’s chambers when she retires for the day. This time, even worse than a rebuff, the woman does not acknowledge her existence upon her perch on her bed. 

“So I’ve heard Istredd is in Nazir,” Yennefer announces. Small talk. A common point of reference. Tissaia knows of Istredd. 

Her response says she doesn’t care. A noncommittal hum vibrates against her lips as she slips off her shoes, placing them just so by her vanity and laying her pendant neatly atop the wood grain. 

“Really, you’re to blame for all of this. If you’d never bid me get that token from Is, I’d have never fucked him into giving me a flower and let it fall from my lips I was part elf. Ergo, I began a rather destructive chain of events that led me to getting metaphorically fucked for decades,” Yennefer rests her chin on a palm which in turn, rests on her knee. She then flips backward onto Tissaia’s bed. “Nor can you blame me for what I asked of you last time.”

“Do you plan to sleep with him?” Tissaia asks pointedly. 

Yennefer jerks up, resting on her elbows now. She frowns. “No.” A growl escapes. “And it’s driving me nuts, but I’ve sworn everyone off, remember? There’s no place to focus all of this chaos.”

“That’s by your own choosing,” Tissaia sits in a chair across from the bed and crosses her legs. 

“How do you do it? I mean, not do anything about this.” She motions awkwardly to her lower half. Again, Tissaia’s eyes skitter away from the danger of looking. 

“I gave up on that long ago,” Tissaia sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I have duties, responsibilities. These things make one appear older than they are.”

“Well, it’s not due to your lack of beauty,” Yennefer blurts out in a moment of too much frankness. Then it gets worse. “You’re still stunning under that veneer.” She startles herself but doesn’t work to tear away what she’s just said.

The room feels incredibly stuffy and too warm. The fact that she’s chosen Tissaia’s bed as a place of rest doesn’t help matters, so she rises and makes her way to the large bay window overlooking the churning waters down below. 

She works at her buttons, the top few, and quickly opens the shutters to take in the cool salt air. With her hands on her hips, she swallows the pride she blew in on. 

“Tissaia, I’m offering again. I need your help. If you’re worried about strings or bullshit, there will be none. I’m convinced, now more than ever, that you’re the only soul on this entire Continent that can save me from myself.” 

Because that’s what this has become-a self destruct tour over swamp and city and mountain, over grassland, river, and bog. She’s burning at both ends. She’s of no mind to know when she’ll flicker out. 

“Why on earth are you asking this of me? Of us? This sort of thing speaks of irrevocable change,” Tissaia shakes her head. 

Yennefer knows she’s trying to process the words, not really asking for further clarification. Tissaia needs her own methodical way of going about things and Yennefer is standing in front of her blowing that order out of the water. 

“You are able to wind life into balls and stuff them like yarn into drawers, not seen or mentioned. To forget unless reminded of it being there. You are better than anyone of not letting emotion overtake action,” Yennefer tries to persuade. She doesn’t know what the end of this looks like, much less it's beginning. “It only changes us if we let it. And knowing how hard-headed we both are…”

“Fine,” is muttered barely audible. 

For a second, Yennefer even thinks she’s imagined it. Her head jerks and she starts to walk over to look at Tissaia still sitting in the chair, eyes cast to her lap. She waits. Gives the words time to spring forth again. 

Just as the waiting turns to agony, much like the last time, she moves to depart unsuccessfully yet again but is told the words more firmly. 

“Turn around, Yennefer,” Tissaia commands. 

Yennefer does and finds the small woman looking less severe than normal. But the worry of what Yennefer is almost certain she’s heard is etched into her features already, the crease already prominent between her brows. A hand reaches up, seeking touch, but seems to think better of it when Tissaia realizes what she’s doing. 

“Fine,” she says softer but louder too. So that there can be no mistake about what has been agreed to. 

The fight to not slide down the brick wall in relief is unbearable. Just as quickly, the realization of what they’ve both come together in unison on has a whole other wave of emotions flooding Yennefer. Some borne out of fear, failure, unsurety. Others breaking forth from curiosity, satisfaction, and another much darker feeling Yennefer doesn’t want to categorize as tied to desire. 

Instead, Yennefer only nods. The smile tugging at her lips is impossible to keep from forming though. 

“Alright then,” she takes a small step forward, closing the gap between them a bit. 

She chances a hand toward Tissaia, picks up the rectoress' palm in an act that is completely unique to them.

In the past, there has been little touch between them and when done, only initiated by Tissaia. A hand to her shoulder pre-enchantment. Both hands gently resting there on either shoulder in Rinde. Less contact between them than Yennefer has fingers, so it’s of little surprise that touching Tissaia like this, even simply, is its own little world of wonder. Prelude to a larger one to come, now that Tissaia has agreed to Yennefer’s proposition. 

Tissaia looks stricken though, like she’s made a grave mistake and is wading through the regret of it already. Looking at the lines of the woman’s palm, Yennefer traces the paths there, the markers of life and vitality. She skims over her flesh in a whisper type of touch. Tissaia’s body betrays her. She closes her eyes and rolls her shoulders with a shudder. 

“How do we begin this, Yennefer?” her crystalline blue eyes flutter open and there’s too much swirling in them for Yennefer to calm wholly. 

Really, she hasn’t thought this through even though she’s been pushing Tissaia toward the ledge of it. Now that it is time to jump off, Yennefer finds herself pondering much the same question. Rather than formulate a plan, Yennefer decides to let it find its route to them. 

“I’ll summon you soon with the arrangements,” Yennefer says softly, holds Tissaia’s hand a little tighter. “Until then, take care of yourself, Tissaia.” 

Yennefer leans forward and places the faintest of kisses on one of the woman’s high cheekbones. With even just a brush of her lips, she knows feeling Tissaia underneath them is something she wants repeatedly. 

Holding up a hand behind her, she speaks the words to conjure a portal and slides into it before she can let her nerves and happiness get the best of her as they wreak havoc already despite their newness.

She tries to tell herself that Tissaia doesn’t mumble _what have I done?_ as Yennefer closes the link off to Tissaia’s chambers. It is better to ignore it, or better yet, question its uttering at all. 

No heart does well with those words anyway. That is, of course, if Yennefer was using hers in this agreement at all. 

//-//

The cobblestone bridge crossing into town boasts Rendanian soldiers at the entrance. Tissaia nods to each of them and holds up her scroll, permitting her freedom of passage. 

While they inspect the paper, she looks to the Pontar flowing underneath their feet. As if sensing her uneasiness, her mare paws at the stones. A small snort escapes in the wait. She places a placating palm on its shiny coat at the neck and speaks a few soothing words. 

The guard hands back the scroll and points to the town’s interior, motioning her through. Taking the horse by the reins, she leads it through the passage. 

All around, the steeply pitched roofs of structures rise to meet the cloudless sky, brick facades accented with deep chestnut colored wood along the surface. Somewhere out of sight but audible, she can hear the sounds of the busy harbor. Offloading goods, fishing, and who knows what else, she thinks. After all, Oxenfurt, for its outward charm, holds a seedy underbelly that Tissaia finds oddly fitting for why she’s arrived. 

In the streets, merchants await at carts and prop open doors, all the while hoping for patrons. Blacksmiths clanging on anvils, the tinkling of bells over herbalists, and the bittersweet scent of wine wafting past vintners establishments ensconce her all around. 

Tissaia pays no mind to most of these things, only vaguely registering them as she navigates the streets. After all, her destination lies near the center proper. A place, she’s been assured, will serve rightly for what’s occurring today, the innkeeper Stjepan a friend from various travels. 

She rests her horse outside the inn, works to gather absent air into her chest as she pushes the door open and enters the place. Upstairs, she’s told. Something she barely hears above the blood roaring in her own ears. 

Outside of the given door, Tissaia pauses. She scans her attire from head to toe, does more than a once over to assure she’s not done too much or too little for today’s...events. 

Another surprise comes when the door remains closed. She knows Yennefer can feel the shaky vibrations of her chaos through the barrier, just like she can feel the excess of Yennefer’s like a smith’s sledge to her chest. 

Finally, it becomes unbearable and Tissaia brings a hand up to knock. _How ridiculous_. Yennefer is prolonging this unnecessarily. Or Tissaia is stalling. Either way, Tissaia knows she will never be 100% ready for what awaits on the other side of the door. 

Yennefer opens it with a lot more grace than Tissaia expects, especially since the force of the woman’s chaos is hitting her like a concussive wave. Even though she’s not sure of the solution or her agreement to be involved in it, she must concede that _something_ must be done. 

The look on her face is interesting in that it seems completely surprised that it’s Tissaia standing on the other side of the door. She places a hand high on the frame and blocks the room with her body, the door resting against her back. 

Tissaia eyes her dubiously. “As if I didn’t have concerns to begin with, your perplexing behavior is adding more.” Her tone is wary. It needs to be because whatever Yennefer is hiding is changing the language of her body. 

A smile spreads across Yennefer then and she reaches down to grab Tissaia’s hand. “Close your eyes,” she commands. 

Again, Tissaia is reluctant to do so but ultimately does because of the other underlying emotion she can detect in Yennefer: pride. So she closes her eyes and lets Yennefer lead her into the room. The door shutting sounds beside her and there is Yennefer’s breath in her ear, her hands on Tissaia’s waist. 

“Stand here for a moment. I’ll be right back,” Yennefer actually kisses Tissaia’s cheek and it stuns her so much, she doesn’t have time to process Yennefer leaving her by herself. After an instant, she hears her again. “Alright, open them.”

Yennefer stands before her holding a single yellow rose wrapped in a silky ribbon. Tissaia grasps at the sight of it, of the candles flickering around the room. Nearby, there’s a table with wine and various meats and cheeses. 

Everywhere Tissaia looks, there are time and effort and thought, and for no bullshit or strings, this is feeling like incredibly too much. Nothing would have been better than this. At least then she could kid herself into thinking what she’s agreed to is inconsequential. 

This however- _this_? It’s like tapping a thin layer of glass and shattering the perfect poise Tissaia has mastered throughout her years. There’s not even a recess of it to stand in, to keep her toes submerged. She swallows thickly. 

“What are you doing, Yennefer?” she says barely above a whisper. 

Whether it’s the tone, Yennefer reading Tissaia’s face, or something else entirely, her own expression falls and she begins to fidget with the rose in her hand. “I just fuck people, Tissaia. There is little romance or, dare I say it, decorum involved. It’s more just debauchery.”

That Tissaia expects from Yennefer. She almost vocalizes it but decides to hold her tongue. There’s little gain in voicing it, she’s sure, and she’d rather get the same type of treatment that Yennefer gives almost everyone else even though they’ve known one another for years. 

Which launches another thought trampling her gut. Yennefer has been staring at her with those same purple eyes since she was sixteen years old. She’s seen hate in them, rebellion, confusion, and indifference. 

There is fear in them now mixed with a hint of kindness, of the care she affords no one else when she takes them into her bed, and that makes guilt begin to bubble before she’s even laid a finger on Yennefer. 

Laying the rose down on a nearby table, she approaches Tissaia slowly. “I don’t know how to do this. I sleep with men, women. I get what I need and cast them away, rarely to see them again. But you’ve been in my life in some way for decades, even if you were miles away. You’re like no one I’ve encountered in my entire life, on this entire continent, and I know this sounds crazy, but I already know what we do here today is going to work. Because it’s you. Because it’s us.” 

Yennefer finally takes a breath and blows a puff upward ruffling her hair. “And if I don’t get to touch you soon, I think my chaos will devour me from the inside out.” She looks around. “Say the words and I’ll whisk all this shit away and we can pretend it never happened.”

Yes, that would certainly be easier. Then Tissaia could concurrently pretend her heart never got jolted in her chest at the sight of it, that deep down she wasn’t touched by Yennefer’s effort. That she hasn’t let the words Yennefer’s spoken bore tiny holes into her resolve at being clinical in her approach to this agreement. 

Tissaia does away with all of the pomp, leaving them in the room as it were before. When Yennefer goes to look at her work undone, Tissaia catches her face by the chin, her own thumb and forefinger keeping her from moving. 

“You asked me to arrive so that we may try a way to quell some of your chaos,” Tissaia tries to adopt a matter of fact tone. She can do this. She _can_. 

She steps toward Yennefer, motions toward the bed. She isn’t sure if that’s how to begin this, especially with the spread Yennefer had concocted for when Tissaia arrived. Yennefer eyes it but doesn’t commit to the idea straight away. 

“I would assume that for you to get rid of some of the excess magic in your body, you will need to…” at this, Tissaia’s tongue stalls out. She knows the words, several in fact to describe the point of reference in her mind. 

But this is Yennefer. They’ve not developed a relationship where talking about pleasure, desire, want, is a part of their vocabulary in the presence of one another. Tissaia has agreed to this though, perhaps rather foolishly, so she must find it in herself to push through. If not, her word means little. She will not be known as this kind of woman.

“Experience the peak amount of pleasure,” Tissaia decides for a rather tame phrase. It doesn’t settle anything though, merely because the fact also remains that for Yennefer to experience this, it must be Tissaia giving it. 

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen since I haven’t been with anyone in a while. I don’t know if I’ll have control,” Yennefer gulps. There’s a tinge of regret to the warning. 

“I’m more than adept at dealing with whatever happens,” Tissaia tries to assure. At least she hopes she is. She has no clue anymore. 

The thought curls outward, gets caught in Yennefer's mind, and the woman’s eyes widen. Her mouth drops open a little and she spits out a string of incoherent profanity when Tissaia forgoes the idea of the bed and pushes her to the edge of the table, sinking to her knees. 

She’s not kneeled for someone in centuries, not since her time in court. It’s become beneath her. But as Yennefer’s hand automatically shoots out to her hair, roughly wreaking havoc on the tight updo Tissaia put together before coming here, she has the traitorous thought that she wants Yennefer to pull it down completely. 

Then she would have something to remember this by; then she would know she had been wrecked too, no matter her own offers for Yennefer’s pleasure. Because this is for Yennefer, is it not?

Tissaia teases the edge of Yennefer’s dress, closes her eyes, and then grips the fabric hard. “I’ve not done this…” _in quite some time_ , she starts to say. Yennefer does not take it as such, instead thinking Tissaia has no idea how to approach what’s about to happen. 

“I like a lot of attention to my clit,” the woman above her says in a rush and then blanches. “If we’re trying to make this quick, as I’m sure you’re wont to do.” 

Tissaia doesn’t know if she wants this to be fast so that she can disappear into her own shame or prolong it so that she can remember it forever. She supposes she will figure that out once she gets further than simply sitting on her knees and gripping the hem of Yennefer’s dress like death. 

_Well, get on with it_ , Tissaia tells herself. It doesn’t steel her resolve any more though and she finds herself ducking her fingers under the fabric, pushing it up at a snail's pace with her digits skimming the olive tinted flesh of Yennefer’s thigh. 

“It would be easier if you got rid of it completely,” Yennefer offers when Tissaia fights a little with the fabric. 

At that, Tissaia stops and glares up at Yennefer before internally giving in and flicking the dress up in a billow to disappear under it. She can’t look at Yennefer, absolutely can’t, so she closes her eyes and goes by feel alone, fingers on the woman’s hips as she reaches out with her lips and connects.

Above her, a violent jerk and breathy moan fling to hit the walls. Tissaia can feel Yennefer’s chaos thrumming, can feel it clashing with her own and making it raise the hairs on her arms and at the nape of her neck. That’s about all the warning she gets before a concussive force of chaos flows out of Yennefer that Tissaia has to dig into her while muttering a spell against Yennefer’s pubis to keep from getting flung backward. 

The rattle and topple of objects around the room clang into Tissaia’s ears along with Yennefer going rigid.

“Shit, Tissaia! I’m so sorry!” Yennefer gasps in apology but then moans when Tissaia doesn’t skip a beat. 

Along with the protection spell, she’s also cast a chrono shift, a slowing of time and Yennefer’s movements so she can do what’s she’s agreed while also anticipatory of any other chaotic outburst of Yennefer’s magic again. 

The sensory overload of everything has Tissaia’s own hand twitching in the need to touch herself while she’s lapping against Yennefer, tasting the tang of her body, smelling the obviousness of her arousal, feeling it on her lips and nose and chin. 

_You’re liking this, you silly woman_.

Alright, fine. Yes, she does like the control she’s got over Yennefer at the moment, even if she’s the one on her knees and having her head shoved encouragingly closer to the other mage’s body. So perhaps the byproduct of this, of the growing issue between her own legs, is that she must busy her hands with something other than holding Yennefer’s jutting bones or she’s going to wind up making an old fool of herself and putting on a show she does not intend to give Yennefer. 

Instead, she plants her right hand on the floor by Yennefer’s foot for leverage and uses her thumb and pointer finger on her left to spread Yennefer open so she can explore her more. 

Oh, the woman she becomes while going down on Yennefer! The way it’s almost transformative, would be if she let it completely overtake her. She roves, she pushes her face as far as she can against Yennefer’s body, and she can feel the exact moment she’s getting Yennefer there. 

A wave of chaos builds again, but Tissaia is ready this time thanks to the spell. She tries to slow down the surge of it in Yennefer, in herself, with an incanters' flow that strokes the edges of their magic to manageable levels as some of it prepares to exit Yennefer’s body in her release. 

Hands are holding the sides of Tissaia’s head with a firm press, legs are locking on either side of her shoulders and down to her sides. Then there’s pulsing against Tissaia’s tongue and lips and the cries above her as Yennefer rides her face through it all. 

A loud pop slices through Tissaia’s eardrums, an explosion of air, and she knows she’s managed to succeed.

When it’s very clear Yennefer is done and panting, Tissaia takes a moment to gather herself before she makes her way from under Yennefer’s skirt and rises from her position with as much poise as she can. 

Yennefer is still leaning against the table and her purple eyes watch Tissaia for any sort of reaction to what she’s just done. There’s a considerably less amount of chaos boiling within her, Tissaia can feel. Still, she asks the question more just to hear Yennefer’s confirmation. 

“Well, I assume that was sufficient enough?” Tissaia’s tone is back to being matter of fact, devoid of the other truth—that she’s a mess between her own legs. She’ll never utter that though and tries to block it from her mind at all. 

“You’re kidding, right?” Yennefer asks in disbelief. A punctured laugh escapes. She seems to realize who she is talking to and straightens a little. “Right, yes. That was…” 

Tissaia can hear all of it in Yennefer’s head. _Amazing, wonderful, fucking incredible._ If she were the type of woman, she might preen a little. She doesn’t let on that she knows with even a flicker across her face. 

“It worked,” Yennefer nods. She shrugs. “For now.”

Oh, right. This is something that must keep happening. Something there is no end in sight to, not as long as Yennefer is intent on ignoring Geralt, ignoring everyone else on the Continent who isn’t Tissaia and who might serve as a substitute between her legs. 

“Let me…” but Yennefer trails off as Tissaia stalks up to her slowly. She watches her throat bob. She doesn’t want to hear the rest. It isn’t an offer she needs to have in her life. This isn’t about her no matter how much Yennefer has tried to voice it upon occasion too. 

Tissaia has not had to be very sultry in all of her life. And even so, not in a very long time. She works to remember how to do it now, like slipping on an old shoe that used to fit. 

Not much of anything exists in the room that did before Tissaia walked in. Everything is knocked over or destroyed. Things sit tipped over or spilled. Her relationship with Yennefer is all but torn apart too, the old markers of it anyway. She’s no longer the woman she once was and suspects she never will be again. She’d done away with Yennefer’s gestures too. All except…

Tissaia watches as Yennefer’s head lolls back as she places both hands behind her, not touching her at all. Again, she operates by feel alone and her fingers wrap around the one thing she didn’t do away with. The one thing that had managed to survive the ruins they’ve made.

Breath pushing against the exposed flesh of Yennefer’s neck, she withdraws the item and brings it to her nose, sniffing the sweet scent of it. She doesn’t smile as she burns her own gaze into Yennefer’s eyes. 

She leaves the inn at Oxenfurt that day with the aroma of Yennefer’s rose in her nose, the yellow petals and long stem sensations against her palm. The taste of Yennefer is still drying on her lips. 


	3. Three or Clash 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The docks of Novigrad provide some inspiration for clash 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, Yennefer is wearing this: https://thewitcher3articles.blogspot.com/2017/10/yennefer-of-vengerberg.html
> 
> Also, this is pure hedonism. Well, maybe with some emotions thrown in too. The design Tissaia creates is sometimes referred to as a 'rope dress.’

_What does the brain matter compared with the heart?” — Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway_

//—//

After the first time, Yennefer tries very hard to staunch the idea of Tissaia’s face between her legs. She spends every night replaying the image while trying to get rid of some of the chaos that’s built up again. It barely takes the edge off. 

She feels a little pitiful as she sends the summons. No salutation, no signed closing remark. All it reads is _I need you_ and _Meet me in Novigrad._ She doesn’t send it rush. She gives it time to travel by courier. To allow it the time to make its way while she tries to calm herself so that she doesn’t blast Tissaia into a wall or worse, tear the roof off of the building. 

Yennefer frowns. There had been some...damages last time. _Two weeks ago, Yennefer._ Her pockets still hurt from paying Stjepan to do repairs for what she destroyed. She’s had to brew a few potions, cast a few spells to get coin again. Enough to be able to afford the room at The Spearhead now.

When she walks in, the innkeep looks at her with a glare after she asks for a room. “Innit you eh one that associates withhin eh bard and his white-haired fiend?” 

Yennefer grimaces at the horrible mangling of language but is also amused by the man’s mincing of words in reference to Geralt. Or not. Either way, Yennefer leans in. “I can assure you that unlike those buffoons, I intend to pay my debts. You will rent me your best room and turn the other way when my lady friend inquires as to which one is mine. It is of no concern to you.”

Unless she manages to miss the handle on her chaos again and winds up messing things up. That’s a bridge best crossed if (when?) it arrives, so she leaves it be. 

He fixes her with a sour look but produces an iron key and tells her what she’s purchased: a room up the stairs and overlooking the water of the port. Surrounded by water on all sides, the life below flourishes on the life in its depths. 

Everywhere Yennefer’s eyes scan, some aspect of the city runs on a facet of the natural force around it. Helped along by also being a free space not under the rule of Redania, Yennefer feels more at peace here than the previous meeting southeast in Oxenfurt. 

She’s not been here in ages, so it holds little in the way of history for her. That seems like reason enough to have chosen the spot considering that the debauchery she had told Tissaia about last time has pretty much ruined every town in some form or fashion. 

Never Aretuza, Yennefer had implicitly understood. Hence the sprawling European style structures below. It’s as good a place as any to come together for her and Tissaia’s agreement. 

She runs a hand over her face at the thought of the rectoress. There’s more to her inside of Yennefer if time would just be dedicated to parsing through the truth of it. Yennefer lets its flutter away as she feels Tissaia’s chaos behind her. 

When she turns, she expects a stoic face, the same icy nothingness she’s always faced even though that same face had been buried underneath her dress a few weeks ago. What she absolutely doesn’t expect is to find Tissaia standing with an amused look on her face and a long rope wrapped around her hand, curling around her elbow and up again. 

“I’m not in the mood to constantly be casting spells while we work through your outbursts,” she offers by way of explanation. She tosses the rope on the bed behind Yennefer. “Take your clothes off and get on your knees in the middle of it.”

“I’ll not have you tie me up like the prisoners in the dungeons,” Yennefer grumbles, fingering the rope and feeling its surface. A nicer one, sure, but still from the docks. Yennefer cuts her eyes back at Tissaia.

“It only means that if you take it as such,” Tissaia sighs. “You, of all people, should be open minded. Moreover, this holds many purposes. Your chaos can be focused with the bonds I tie, hopefully serving as a relaxing agent while mentally stimulating you to deal with your own body.”

“I can see I was foolish to think I would be the one doing the requests,” Yennefer cuts a little, begins working at the wide belt at her waist, dropping it to the ground loudly as Tissaia watches. She wants this to be a show. She wants to drive Tissaia mad. 

The iridescent feathers on her shoulders ruffle as she removes the brown gloves on her hands which land atop the pile she has started. Next, the dark silk of the kerchief falls as does the midnight fabric of her dress. That leaves her in her knee-high black boots and thigh high stockings with lace at the trim, flower printing making a pattern. 

As she goes to strip off the stockings after the boots, Tissaia’s once immobile body jolts forward with a hand shooting out. “Leave them on!”

To say that Yennefer is surprised is an understatement. But will she actively voice this in admittance? Absolutely not. Instead, she stays as impenetrable as her former mentor. Or at least how the woman used to be. Yennefer doesn’t utter a word. 

Tissaia looks embarrassed and Yennefer delights in this a bit. She drops her hand and adopts her go-to stance, regaining her decorum. “Just...leave them on.” 

_Leave them on—please_ , Yennefer thinks. But that word is missing from Tissaia’s repertoire it seems, so she lets it go too. There are far more pressing things to think of such as the throbbing at her apex and the rope behind her which is awaiting its usage. 

She walks to the bed and enters it with her knees, getting in the middle and watching to see if Tissaia will decide to move now. Yennefer knows the look on her face is a challenge, but Tissaia doesn’t immediately take the bait. She watches the rise and fall of Yennefer’s chest, the way her breasts sit on her body with dusky nipples tightly pebbled. Waiting for Tissaia to do what she will. 

“You wield chaos like a woman afraid she will wake up one morn and be without it,” Tissaia says as a beginning to whatever it is she has planned as she finally makes her way to the bed, close enough to retrieve the rope again. 

“I’d say I’ve been doing fairly well, all things considered,” Yennefer tilts her head while looking upward in mock contemplation. Her bravado falters a little when she feels the bed dip and Tissaia move in behind her. 

She doesn’t turn her head around, instead using her peripheral to try and make out what’s about to happen. “Do you want to try this with me, Yennefer?” is whispered hotly in her ear and she finds her head falling back, trying to find Tissaia in the void of space between them. 

Yes, she wants to try this. She nods in response but then feels Tissaia ask more commandingly again. “You must speak to me the entire time.” 

“Yes. You know what you’re doing?” It comes out a question. She feels Tissaia’s smirking reply behind her as she fumbles in movement. 

“Practiced, never tried for real,” the woman admits and then Yennefer both sees and feels the slightly rough cord dangle delicately around her throat to drape down her front with a loose curl at her back. 

She feels Tissaia’s fingers working, brushing against Yennefer’s bare skin as she does. There’s a tug and then Tissaia is pressing in closer, beginning to weave the rope around Yennefer’s body. 

A knot at her collarbone, between her breasts, at her rib cage, her belly button, and the last agonizingly placed right atop her clit. With every gentle working of the knots, Tissaia and Yennefer go back and forth with words. 

“As I stated, the way you handle your chaos is beautiful sometimes, brash others. We need to find the balance between the two,” Tissaia whispers and pulls the cord between Yennefer’s legs. 

She can’t help it—she bucks when it presses more firmly against her nub. “Balance has never exactly been more forte,” Yennefer tries to calm her amped-up body. “That is more your wheelhouse.”

“Which is why I am here, is it not? Why we are doing this, right here, right now?” The fabric of Tissaia’s dress is grating, a pressure Yennefer has trouble ignoring. She’d rather they be skin to skin instead of feeling the muted push of Tissaia’s breasts each time she wraps the rope around to connect with another knot on Yennefer’s front. 

Her breathing is ragged trying to hold back the burst of energy Tissaia is building in her body. Seeming to sense this, Tissaia stalls for a moment and brings her right arm to lay across the first knot, and places her forehead against Yennefer’s ear. 

“Reserve your chaos. Bend it to be contained in your body. Redirect the flow of it so that it doesn’t burst forth like a tidal wave,” Tissaia urges. “Focus on the points where the knots are on your body.

“I’m trying, but one is directly on my clit and you keep pulling that damn rope,” Yennefer squirms a little on her knees, back pushing into Tissaia’s front.

“Perhaps we can find a dual purpose to this. Try, Yennefer,” the woman behind her urges. “Or I will make sure you never come.”

“Ah, fuck!” Yennefer groans. Afraid to even say the word the first time, now saying it with ease. Two weeks have done Tissaia well. Still, Yennefer tries to turn her head to send Tissaia a glare. “Withholding sex? I see your cool exterior also extends to your interior as well.”

“I agreed to help you find a way to control your chaos so that something terrible doesn’t befall you. I had no plan the first time, which I should have. But the agreement was never to be physical. The agreement was in the methods, Yennefer, not a sole act.”

Yennefer tries very hard not to deflate, but she knows Tissaia is right. However, Tissaia had been the one to fall to her knees and bury her head in Yennefer’s folds. Yennefer just did the sensible thing and held her there. 

“Once again, any blame is placed on your shoulders. Along with my legs last time,” Yennefer teases but then Tissaia is wrapping the rope at her hips and bringing it back around to the curve of her backside, pulling it tight to arch Yennefer’s back. 

“Yennefer…” Tissaia warns. 

Her name is also a kick in the flanks to stop resisting, so she does. She closes her eyes, reaches out to brush against Tissaia’s mind in askance for her to guide Yennefer as she does as she’s been bade. 

Their minds link and Yennefer tries to calm the gushing chaos, zeroing in on the points on her body as Tissaia speaks to her while pushing her hand into each of the knots. 

A lashing of energy, pure and unbridled, threatens to escape, but Tissaia rakes a hand to steady the jolting of it through Yennefer’s body, floats soothing words into her brain. Almost as if being consumed slowly by the tides of the sea, Yennefer feels it abate as Tissaia holds her through it all, melds their bodies together so that not even air can pass through. 

_Reserve your chaos_ , she repeats and Yennefer feels calm spreading throughout her body. Her chaos is still there, alive and well, but it dances merrily within the confines of her form. 

Moments pass in stillness and Yennefer takes measured breaths in and out, her head dropping to almost meet the knot at her collarbone. Her body sags and she gives herself over to the serenity flowing through her, bolstered somehow by Tissaia’s thoughts and hands and the steady rhythm of her breath at the nape of Yennefer’s neck. 

When she feels centered, that must translate through her to the woman because she feels something between her legs simultaneously with “don’t open your eyes.”

The soft downiness of it clues Yennefer into what’s wedged there, but it grows firmer as it’s worked to brush in such a way that she needs it. Her hands are moved first one and then the other to her thighs as she sits on her haunches and feels Tissaia directing her movement with a grip on the rope attached to Yennefer within her hands.

“I told you many years ago that chaos was the most dangerous thing in this world. Time has not changed that and it still rings true. But your balance and control are tipped sideways often and you struggle to remain upright in the wake of it,” Tissaia says behind her. 

She pulls on the cord suddenly, making Yennefer’s body jolt against the pillow underneath her hips. A croak can’t help but escape as she feels the bubble within her begin again.

“No, Yennefer. Control it. Center yourself enough to use your chaos to reach the gratification which you seek. Stroke your reserves but never use them,” her voice leads Yennefer again as she encourages her to move through a gentle back and forth. 

Yennefer will not survive this, not with the sensations of the fisherman’s rope creating a bodice on her body. Not with Tissaia’s chest deliciously pressed against her and her voice in her ear, ruffling the hairs again at her neck’s nape. 

“I…” Yennefer lets it trip out of her mouth but can’t form anything else after that. 

Everything’s feeling, every thought being compartmentalized to hold it together, to make sure she doesn’t crack the facade of another building when she tips over into falling. 

“You can do this, Yennefer. Listen to my voice. Feel what’s been inside you since you were but a young woman,” Tissaia moves a little with every buck of Yennefer’s hips. “Channel it.”

As if to test her, the hand not holding the rope reaches around Yennefer and wedges between her body and the pillow to help her along. Yennefer, mercifully, manages to hang on as she rides the hand and soft object below her. 

“Tissaia, I’m going to...I’m almost…” 

“If you’re there, find a way to work through the brink,” Tissaia tells her. 

_Feel what’s been inside of you since you were but a young woman._ The words hit home and it’s like clouds parting to reveal a tingling warmth all over. Like Yennefer should have known this was how to find it all along—in the arms of Tissaia de Vries. 

“Tissaia, I lo…” the rest is cut off in a violent strangle as Tissaia jerks her back. 

“No!” 

Yennefer wails as she comes anyway, sinking on Tissaia’s hand as the shockwaves undulate through her. But not the room. It remains as pristine as when she first walked in. 

As soon as she’s done, she whirls on Tissaia with rage in her eyes. The woman drops her hold on the rope and backs slightly away. She doesn’t even bother to flinch, much to Yennefer’s chagrin.

“You stopped me,” she spits out. 

“You were about to make a mistake,” Tissaia says levely. “You know not what you feel, especially not then with trying to control two aspects of your chaos.”

“Don’t aim to tell me what I feel or to fix my emotions in such a way as to befit you. It’s already been done to me once before,” Yennefer says haughtily. She rises from the bed to stand beside it, the rope still wrapped tightly around her. She wants it fucking off. 

“Yennefer…”

Instead of fighting with the ripple, she reaches for Tissaia’s shoulder and grips it tightly. “Let me feel this, Tissaia. For you. For us.”

“We are not what you are holding on to. We can never be.”

The ensuing staredown is aching. Yennefer wonders who will outlast who. She sets her jaw and waits to be reprimanded again. Her heart punches her in the chest, reminds her of what she feels. Chaos boils. She wants to burst open. 

As if sensing this, Tissaia gets up and a portal pops immediately. Maybe Yennefer acts like a petulant child as she watches Tissaia’s stride through it. 

Maybe she says she never wants to see her again. Whatever. She decides that instead of keeping this reserved for Tissaia, there must be someone worthy of what she has to offer. Who will gladly take it too instead of running away. 

After all, Istredd is in the south. Nazir suddenly seems highly entertaining compared to what sits outside her window in Novigrad. 

(She cuts the bindings in half, one by one, instead of dissolving them by magical means. It feels like she’s cutting Tissaia off of her, out of her completely.)


	4. Four or Clash 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer is mad at Tissaia from their last encounter, but the Conclave meeting is occurring and Tissaia is headed off to Sodden...

_“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” — Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being_

**//—//**

Yennefer does not call for her after that. 

Which is probably both a blessing and a curse at the same time because there are rumblings that Cintra is soon to be no more. While Tissaia doesn’t need to have the free time to think about Yennefer’s gutting words as she conjured the portal, she could also use Yennefer by her side as tensions mount. 

She’s stuck inside of this thought when he walks through the door. He has to speak her name twice to get her attention. One more than he should have ever had to, all because of Yennefer. 

“You need to call a meeting,” Vilgefortz urges. “Gather the mages across the Continent.

“And have Stregobor peacock his way through it at Ban Ard? Hardly,” Tissaia dismisses. 

“Nilfgaard will not care of our differing politics. They’ll start with Cintra and wipe the land of everything we hold dear and love,” Vilgefortz tries to heed. 

Tissaia’s vision goes fuzzy, far off. The word ‘love’ stumbles her mentally. Immediately, she blocks it off from the dark eyes watching her quiet reserve. 

“Cintra has been too proud,” Tissaia concedes. 

“Then let us not be. Let the sorcerers come to Aretuza so that we may discuss our actions moving forward. I’ll gather those that might otherwise refuse.”

She can’t help the laugh that escapes her, a withering sound. Smoke curls from her pipe and she picks it up, taking a drag. She doesn’t care if he finds it unladylike. 

“Where were you thinking of beginning your persuasion? I hear Dagobert of Vole is somewhere near Vizima,” she throws out offhandedly. 

“He will be a fine addition to our ranks, no doubt. But I hear your former pupil is in Nazir and I thought of paying her a visit first.” 

He goes in for the swooping kill. And he fucking knows it. 

Tissaia sets her jaw and casts her eyes menacingly at him. “Leave her be. She’s shunned this institution with every step.”

She watches as he strides forward, his gait amiable. His face is light and carefree. “Have you not said she holds immense talent?”

“She’s the best student I ever taught,” Tissaia slips out in a whisper. She stills. 

He smiles knowingly and turns without another word. Her own chaos bursts, shaking the items in the room. (Shaking her fragile heart.)

**//—//**

She feels her before she sees her because that is how they have been circling one another for years. It’s been a few months since Novigrad and Tissaia has the wherewithal to know it will never be enough time. 

Yennefer is in the eel pit below. _You’ve already ruined one life. Stop there._ She leaves it vague for a reason. But it’s her life that Yennefer has ruined. 

All of two times watching the woman come and Tissaia is a mess half of the time. Her poise, her balance, her control? They’re shit. It’s as if she’s never had faculty of them whenever Yennefer is near. 

Yennefer follows her out of the cavern, flings things at her back that feel like daggers. This one surely knows how to make her bleed. But the other mages start filtering in and she must leave whatever is transpiring between her and Yennefer for another time. 

When she expects her to leave though, she follows again. Stands beside Triss until the other half of the room is blaming her for what they’re all facing. They don’t know that Yennefer’s hackles have already risen. That she’s come with teeth bared, raring for a fight. 

Tissaia tries to step between them, gives an impassioned speech about being scared, prideful, and giving up. About how one should learn to try again. 

_I’m speaking to you, Yennefer. Tell me you’re listening._ Saying Cintra, saying the mages. Meaning the bright soul with the purple eyes, meaning her own stubborn self. Both fall through her fingertips and she watches Yennefer huff out of the doors. Improbably, she follows now. 

Aretuza will not stand if she and Yennefer cannot, side by side. There will be nothing left. She tells her this. 

“If you will not do it for the Brotherhood, do it for me. Please.” Tears threaten. She will not let them go. 

“Have you ever used that word before?” Yennefer challenges. Tissaia doesn’t miss the way she looks at her lips. 

It causes the frankness in her to well up. “I didn’t think you wanted to see me again,” Tissaia murmurs in the same tone as the please. 

Yennefer grabs her by the elbow, drags her around the corner, and conjures a portal. Tissaia can feel her chaos, watches her body have much the same reaction as in Oxenfurt. “Yennefer, calm your energy.”

But she’s dragged through the swirling abyss and they’re standing in her chambers. She looks around for a brief second before she’s propelled back into the wall. 

“I don’t want to see you,” Yennefer sneers, her lip curling a bit. “I want to fuck and get fucked.” 

She spins their positions so that Tissaia is outside looking in. Yennefer’s hands work with her back pointed outward and soon, her black patterned dress is falling to the floor leaving her bare. 

Her baser instincts get the better of her and Tissaia’s eyes trace down. The slope of Yennefer’s back and posterior lift outward and she spreads her legs, placing her hands against the wall. 

“Get to it, Rectoress. I know how you prefer not to dawdle.” Yennefer’s face is smug as she shakes her shapely hips a little. 

Tissaia huffs but doesn’t move. She has to bite the inside of her cheek to not dignify Yennefer with an answer. 

“That’s fine. Still playing hard to get I see,” Yennefer shrugs and runs one hand down the wall to between her legs. “Not that I need you touching me to get off. You standing there watching might be good enough. Gods knows I’ve done it many nights to the thought of you without you actually being there.”

And so she goes to work, head turned and biting her lip as she watches Tissaia stand. The technique she worked on with Yennefer last time filters through her head as she thinks about those same pressure points on her body, tries to soothe her own rising chaos down. She will not let Yennefer break her. 

“The looks you get, the faces you make. I’ve been chasing them in my waking hours and dreams for years I think,” Yennefer circles and presses, lets Tissaia see everything as she bends. 

Tissaia is sure her teeth would turn to dust if she let them, the sheer amount of grinding she’s doing to keep control more than she’s ever had to do. She looks off, trying to fixate on anything other than what’s happening in front of her. 

She could leave. She could turn and walk away, leaving Yennefer with her hand between her legs and ragged screams in her throat at the fact that Tissaia would be leaving again. Her feet, however, feel melded to the floor. 

“Rescues me from pig shit, rescues me from myself then proceeds to verbally berate me for years after. Doesn’t contact me again after I’ve ascended, doesn’t send one singular missive after I’ve fucked over Aedirn—post my ripping the assignment from Fringilla’s paws.” Yennefer ducks her head for a moment, moans, and then turns back around. 

“You show up again in Rinde after we go years apart. You agreed to help me after I’ve fucked _myself_ over by messing with a djinn and a witcher.” Yennefer is working in earnest now, chasing. Doing the thing she’s done best all of her life: trying to find something that is just out of her grasp. 

“I try to speak my feelings to you, but you shove me back down to the ground, the very thing I’ve been trying to rise from my entire life. But you are not impenetrable, my dear Rectoress. Even as you stand there now, you are a split of a person. The one before me and the one after me. And no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, you’ll never be the same again.” Yennefer burns her look into Tissaia’s soul. “Because my come has been on your nose and lips and chin. Because one day, you’ll have felt it everywhere on your blasted body because you’re as lost as…”

Tissaia slams herself into Yennefer’s back, roughly bats her hand away from between her legs. She takes over while Yennefer’s hand creeps back up the wall. “I’ll not stand there and let you slander me, ripping my existence to shreds.” She does not give a warning. She shoves inside of Yennefer, meeting no resistance at all.

“What you mistake as slander is the story of us together,” Yennefer presses her back into Tissaia fully. “I’d not have it any other way.” Her right hand presses Tissaia’s into the flesh of her hip. 

Tissaia rests her forehead between Yennefer’s shoulder blades, her attention stuck on certain focal points. On making sure she doesn’t lose the discipline to do this without feelings sneaking in, on keeping the pace her hand has set as she reaches around Yennefer’s hips that keep moving back and forth. 

_You could mark me well, let everyone know it was Tissaia de Vries who shattered me when we head to Sodden Hill tomorrow_ , Yennefer purrs inside Tissaia’s brain. _Let down the barriers. Let them hear you making me wail._

Tissaia makes sure they’re reinforced as Yennefer begins to clench. “I’ll not do it and you know why.”

“At least I know what you tell yourself anyway,” Yennefer rolls her hips. “But do keep it up. This back and forth does it for me.” 

And then she’s locking onto Tissaia’s fingers, grasping her inside of her body and holding on. Her palms lay wet sounding smacks against the stone wall and Tissaia’s own hips mirror Yennefer as the woman slashes through the waves.

Immediately, she’s pushed back away from Yennefer’s body, her hand coated in the proof of the woman’s desire. 

_You kept your chaos at bay_ , Tissaia wants to say, but Yennefer is shrugging on her dress again and breezing by with a flick of her black hair over her shoulder. 

“I’ll see you on the boat tomorrow,” she says and then throws open the door and slams it shut. 

Tissaia grips the hand with Yennefer on it with her other, holding it against her heart. She wishes there was another seam of reality to slip into, one where this agreement had never come to pass. 

Her eyes have been blown wide open. Yennefer is right. Tissaia will never be the same again. 

(She wasn’t really anyway. After all, once upon a time…) 


	5. Five or Clash 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Sodden a lot of things happen for a bunch of reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I've had an absolutely rubbish week, so I needed to focus my energy on SOMETHING instead of the junky way I feel (heartbreak and women, eh?) Anyway, that is why you get two updates in three days.

_ The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.” — Stephen King, The Stand _

//

Yennefer spends the entire boat trip south pressed against Triss’s shoulder and staring at the back of Tissaia’s head. She tries to dismiss the thought about how only hours earlier, the woman had her hand shoved between Yennefer’s legs and was working her into oblivion. 

_ How easily she’s able to flick it on and off, _ Yennefer thinks moodily. She wonders if Tissaia had to run a basin of warm water, wonders if she had taken a towel to clean Yennefer off of her like Yennefer had to do herself. How she had to stop as she swiped gingerly, the phantom feel of Tissaia rearing its ugly head. 

They disembark on the beach, the waves crashing against the rocks and sand. She watches as Tissaia’s legs carry her exceptionally quick over the uneven terrain, even tamped down by the heavy dress she wears. She gains a bit of distance, leaving Yennefer to walk beside Vilgefortz. 

She rolls her eyes but decides to engage him in his military strategy. After all, Tissaia has managed to drag her to war. A plan is probably a good thing to have. 

He stops her with a hand on her hip. Yennefer can’t help but think of how differently Tissaia touches her there. “Why did you come?” he wonders. 

Well, she’s been doing a lot of that lately too. All of it tied to one source. Yennefer stares him down, not once leaving eye contact with him. 

She’s here because of who walks ahead, the tight bun bobbing with her steps. This is blocked from Vilgefortz though. He will never know this. None of them will. 

Yennefer steps around him, brushing a shoulder as she passes. Further up, Yennefer watches Tissaia begin to enter the tree line. She stops though and turns around to see if the rest of the group is on her heels. 

Both she and Yennefer share a look, one that is full of too much and too little at the same time. Yennefer averts her gaze and follows the swish of the roped cords of her dress. The ones that remind her of a vastly different rope around her body. 

She’d chosen it for a reason, hoping that it would at least garner a stare from the woman with the ice-blue eyes. If Tissaia makes the connection, she doesn’t let on. 

Yennefer works through the technique that Tissaia taught her. Still, she burns for the woman that had her only a night ago.

//—//

The shitty mood from the previous evening (really for the last few months) carries over as they enter Sodden Hill. The rising rock walls of the keep make Yennefer feel trapped, just like when she’s inside of Aretuza despite the sky being bright and wide open. 

After they enter the gate and she makes some rather irritable off-handed comments, she and Tissaia avoid one another as everyone prepares for war. Yennefer walks around and broods, her own battle within greater than the probability of physically dying. The latter will more than likely occur before the former gets resolved. 

It’s not like they can completely dodge one another’s presence in the keep, their gazes locking a handful of times. But Yennefer purposely deviates from wherever Tissaia is at for most of the day. 

Once, she almost folds. She almost caves and confronts Tissaia telepathically. But she can tell just from touching the edges of Tissaia’s mind that the woman has closed herself off. 

Night falls and she finds herself still wandering around the camp. Triss sidles up with her general mood in life, warm and open. She bites an apple and draws attention to what lies in front of them: Tissaia and her companion sitting on the wall, tankards in their hands. 

“Is Vilgefortz to be our new daddy?” Triss teases in query, but mostly in jest. 

Yennefer doesn’t even flinch or acknowledge it. At the fact that Vilgefortz has just as much a chance of becoming a daddy to a ragtag group of mages as Yennefer does to raising a brood of them as their second mommy. 

The thought flashes hot, dangerous. She doesn’t want to think of others entertaining Tissaia’s whims and desires. But so far, Yennefer has only taken from Tissaia and given nothing in return. The guilt begins to spread as if caught on tinder. Why would the woman want to come back? There’s been nothing in it for her at all. 

Geralt being brought up only makes things worse until it’s being shattered by Tissaia’s words and a cup being held out. An olive branch maybe. Yennefer takes it and sits down. Death won’t stray from her thoughts though. 

“All the more reason to live tonight,” Tissaia’s voice is warm from drink and something else Yennefer very much wants to believe in. 

“Mmm, like you.” She finds her eyes cast over to Vilgefortz and they both appraise him silently. When she looks back to Tissaia, the mirth at the idea is apparent in her eyes. 

They both chuckle. How can this woman be blind to what’s right here, right beside the both of them? Vilgefortz means nothing and they know it. They’re too far into each other, whether Tissaia wants to admit it or not. 

If this life is ending tomorrow though, Yennefer decides it’s for the best. When Tissaia asks if she’s ready to die, she supposes it’s of no consequence. She’s been ready since she was sixteen. The twin marks on her wrists bear the proof of that.

“I’ve lived two or three lifetimes already,” Yennefer tries to glean even a sliver of positivity. 

“You haven’t been satisfied in any of them,” Tissaia looks sympathetic. 

This makes Yennefer ponder. Of what she’s done, what she’s tried to do. Of what the two of them have managed to create, however small. It feels like flashes of satisfaction. When she can gain a smile from Tissaia, a tender touch, a look like the one she holds now. 

“I’ve tried,” Yennefer realizes. It’s just the succeeding part that’s often been disappointing. She’s not done much of note, has no one to truly keep pushing oxygen into her lungs for. Life, for what it has been, has no more to give. She voices this much. 

“You still have so much left to give.” 

The words practically saw Yennefer into with the way they’re delivered, with every ounce of sincerity and feeling Tissaia de Vries can conjure in her body. She brings her eyes to Tissaia for a brief instant, but the other woman rises quickly to walk away.

She takes but a second of contemplation of her own before she’s making her way to Tissaia through the bodies milling about. 

Yennefer skids to a stop where Tissaia has designated her area of the keep, not another soul in sight for many meters. Her back is to Yennefer, but she turns her head gracefully as Yennefer breathes through her mouth. 

They say nothing, Yennefer’s feet carrying her across the space between them. She touches Tissaia’s arm, runs her fingers along the thick fabric of the woman’s dress. She glances down at her bedroll, a blanket laying atop and awaiting.

“I’m not here to bottle chaos tonight,” Yennefer begins, her hand also starting a light pattern on the cloth under her hand. “I’m here because this is something we both know.”

Tissaia doesn’t speak as Yennefer works to unclasp the bolted fabric at her front. When it’s undone and revealing a sliver of flesh to Tissaia’s waist, Yennefer tucks her fingers underneath the tall collar of it and parts it like water, watching as it falls to her hips. 

She’s not seen Tissaia like this, gloriously bare. Her chest is surprisingly ample for the compactness of her body. Her nipples create little peaks and Yennefer wants to touch them but stops herself from going all in at once. 

With one hand falling to her rib cage and the other caressing Tissaia’s cheek, Yennefer never removes her eyes from the woman’s muted blue in only the lunar light of the night. She moves in slowly, gently. If this is her last night on the earth, she aims to spend it memorizing absolutely everything about the woman underneath her fingers. 

As their lips meet, Yennefer thinks back to her previous words, about how she said she was ready to die. But with Yennefer eventually pushing the rest of the heavy dress to the ground and leaving Tissaia exposed, a different one takes hold—that maybe there are some things worth living for. Maybe there are other kinds of magic.

She’s never been so grateful for someone not wearing a shift. Tissaia is not exactly perfection personified but very near it in Yennefer’s eyes. Every freckle a constellation on her skin, every scar a story Yennefer very much wants to hear and a path to another place to explore. 

Yennefer works at her own dress, watches as Tissaia does her own observation of the rope-like fringe. Knows that she finally understands that it’s for the two of them, a comment on the time before last. Of how Yennefer had wanted to tell Tissaia of the world in her heart. 

So she presses in against Tissaia, their chests melded together all the way down to their bellies and hips. Tissaia lets herself be laid upon her bedroll, lets Yennefer hover above her. 

They’ve not kissed until tonight. Already, what Yennefer is doing is more than Tissaia has ever let her or that she’s ever even tried. She finds that she’s in love with it all, from the line splitting Tissaia’s chin to the one splitting her thighs. 

Perhaps even greater though is the depth of the woman’s heart. For as much as Tissaia de Vries has tried to appear unaffected, of standing outside of interest to their agreement, she’s given Yennefer a way to deal with what’s been done to her. 

“Why couldn’t it have been you,” comes out a broken kind of whisper, not a question like it should be. 

Looking at Tissaia lying beneath her, Yennefer can’t help but wonder why things happen the way they do. Why must she be tied to someone like Geralt when Tissaia is right below her looking like everything? How, if she had her own set of wishes, she’d only likely need one anyway: to have Tissaia for all eternity. 

So Yennefer looks down into Tissaia’s crystal eyes, places either leg on the sides of Tissaia’s hips, then plants one foot on the ground. The woman beneath her has a reverent look gracing her features, one that looks at peace with what’s about to occur. 

While she may have not grown in Tissaia’s heart in the same way she has in Yennefer’s, the younger mage has given her enough time to come to the understanding that she’s been loved for quite some time, that Yennefer wants her in ways that cannot be fulfilled through the language of words. 

Yennefer presses their centers together, drags herself over the bareness of a woman she didn’t even know her heart wanted at one time. The first feel of them against one another is electric. Her chaos swirls about madly, but she finds it within herself to focus on Tissaia down below.

The two of them are quiet pants into the cricket song night, the crackle of fires and merriment louder than the noises that fall from their mouths. 

Their hands are gentle, Yennefer’s pressing against Tissaia’s shoulder or skimming across the rise and fall of her breasts. Tissaia holds Yennefer’s hips during the dips and rises, Yennefer wanting the Rectoress’s fingers to make indentations but knowing they won’t. Tissaia doesn’t leave markers on anyone. She is always internal. 

_ Maybe eternal too _ , Yennefer thinks. 

She’s been in every country and town on the entire Continent and not once has she managed to outrun what’s been nipping at her heels all along: that this woman, this small, severe, and beautiful sorceress, has been a form of destiny.

Like she was meant to find Yennefer, to break her down and make her build herself up so that she didn’t have to be just another woman in the world. So that she could be a damn powerful one too. 

Yennefer decides that regardless of what Tissaia thinks, what she believes or allows or agrees to, what they’re doing right now underneath the stars is making love. Because the two of them could die tomorrow. Because Yennefer can’t stand one more instant feeling shitty in a world where that’s all she seems to feel. 

As if sensing the disquiet, the mishmash of chaotic force in Yennefer’s body, Tissaia somehow manages to maneuver Yennefer to the ground, pinning her with her knees on either side. 

She picks up Yennefer’s abandoned motions, begins to delicately ride Yennefer as she presses them together. Watching the way Tissaia’s hips swivel, the grip she has on Yennefer’s body, and the rub of every movement, Yennefer struggles to hang on. 

Again, the thought moves forward of how this has always been a solo act and Yennefer wants nothing more than to rectify this. She reaches down to between them, places a thumb securely, and finds a rhythm. 

With her mouth dropping open, Tissaia allows herself to finally come for the first time with Yennefer. Lightness flutters as she watches Tissaia work through the sensations of it, as she unwittingly grasps and gasps, closing those gorgeous pale orbs.

Yennefer sits up and holds her around the waist as her chest heaves, feels the fleshy planes of her body and thinks that this is the only way that things ever need to be. It may not be easy. It may feel like being lost more than found. But it is worth every breath escaping from their mouths. 

Tissaia holds Yennefer too, the tenderness between them unfurling. When she garners air again, she pulls away and looks deeply. 

“Go back to your bedroll, Yennefer,” she instructs, not cold but warm like their bodies pressed skin to skin. “They need you more than me.”

She would be hurt if she didn’t already know that this was how it was going to go. That one of them would be leaving somehow. If she doesn’t retreat soon though, everything will threaten to well up again. The things they already know. 

Yennefer lunges up, kisses Tissaia with everything she cannot speak. All that is not allowed to escape. She rolls out from under her then, leaving Tissaia naked and on her knees. 

Almost like the first time. 


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Sodden, Tissaia yearns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The story Yennefer tells in the cave is based on "Had We But World Enough And Time" by ClydeThistles. I needed a good fairy tale and that story was PERFECT. Thank you for letting me "borrow" it, ClydeThistles.

_“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” — John Green, The Fault in Our Stars_

//—//

After Yennefer is captured, Tissaia aches. The multitude of which she has never felt in her centuries of living. 

How long had she searched that hill? How long had she screamed out the name of a lover she never intended to take? How many times since then has she mourned for the way that things have transpired?

It’s endless, wide, and deep. Like oceans or caves or other dark places that rarely see light. Much the same inside of Tissaia herself. But pillars can break. They can crumble. 

The dimeritium does her no favors. It leaves her in a haze of physical ache parted with that of wondering where Yennefer is. 

The hardest thing she’s had to do in her entire existence is walk away from that charred battlefield. The way both Sabrina and Triss had to remove her from it after almost everyone else had left, Foltest’s army long gone and only stragglers left behind. 

Both he and Kaedwen had been too late. For as long as she will continue to live, Tissaia will never forget the flames engulfing that hill, the twisting embers of the expended ones rising with the smoke into the night sky. She’ll never forget the bodies, the faces charred or twisted in agonizing death. She will never get rid of the feeling of absolute awe at Yennefer’s chaos and control working at the same time. 

_You saved me. I won’t ever forget that._

Those had been some of Yennefer’s final words to her before she had told her to forget the bottle finally. After years and decades of telling her to reserve it, Tissaia had always known exactly what to say to make Yennefer spill it all forth. 

Now, it’s she that has been saved. Wrapped tightly in a bubble of magic created of the love Tissaia never allowed Yennefer to murmur. Saved by the one person who should never have been both a question and answer in Tissaia’s life.

She breaks a thousand times, over and over again. All because of Yennefer. All because of a chaos she can no longer feel.

//—//

The southern kingdoms are one sprawling mass of Nilfgaard. That’s what Cahir has managed while Tissaia has been so foolishly preoccupied. At least since Rinde. 

Somehow, the man has managed to take half of the once free world Tissaia has known for close to four hundred years and turn it into something vastly different than it’s always been. 

What’s worse, it’s fairly well known that her presence had been at Sodden. A supposed place one would not expect to see a rectoress of a school, regardless of being the most powerful magic user in the land. 

Some of that title has since shifted to Yennefer though, drawing the attention off of Tissaia a bit. Regardless, the tale has been woven enough for passage past Sodden to be near impossible. 

By the grace of the gods, she has managed to sneak into Nazir, into other bordering kingdoms of the south such as Toussaint and Metinna. Every lead into Yennefer’s whereabouts takes her past them all, into Mag Turga or Geso. She follows even simple breaths about Yennefer. 

Like the names standing solemnly at Sodden, the ends are all dead. Yennefer is simply nowhere to be found. 

Tissaia portals back into her room, falling to her knees and palms hitting the rug below. She curls in a ball and weeps into it, another unsuccessful venture to Ebbing this time. Once again, no Yennefer. 

Months have passed since Sodden. She’d wager she’s trekked thousands of miles, portaled in and out of spots that should have resulted in her death considering the danger they held, the sheer precariousness of even setting foot in a kingdom overtaken by Nilfgaard against the grain of reason. 

But it all goes back to Yennefer, the woman whom Tissaia is learning she would place herself in harm’s way a hundred times over. Especially when she gets the first solid news in months: Yennefer has been seen. 

Tissaia clutches at the note, closes her eyes against what it says. Etolia, as deep in the heart of the Nilfgaardian Empire as she can go without standing in the streets of the City of Golden Towers. 

So far, she’s been lucky to make the multiple trips back for a lot of reasons: inconspicuous dress and behavior, small stature good for stealth activities, falsified documents that she’d had to get the best forger in the lands to make, using her chaos in such a way no one could pick up the muddled mess of it. 

From her clothing to the pattern of her speech, she’s had to meticulously prepare in the event that she is stopped, or worse, must have to fight her way out of a situation that cannot be avoided. There is no other way, not if she plans on finding Yennefer again. 

There are no others to consult. She always makes the journey alone. Whether that be foolhardy or being cognizant of what everyone would tell her if she divulged her intentions, she’s not sure. She bypasses it all and does what her heart tells her to.

Gone are the once-fertile lands, the lush meadows, and golden wheat nowhere in sight. Even the previously clear rivers run brown and thick if they even run at all. She crosses a low point and gets nothing but sludge on her shoes. 

What Tissaia encounters are broken people with broken faces, all living in a broken world. Their features bear the markers of defeat well and she supposes she fits right in with them. They’ve all lost something dear. 

All that flies away when Tissaia gets the first tingling of Yennefer’s chaos in ages. 

It feels like being wrapped in a warm blanket, of being jolted awake from a long slumber. Of summer thawing winter in her veins. While faint, it feels like breathing again when Tissaia hasn’t been sure her lungs would ever inflate again. 

Nilfgaard may be mighty, but they’ve spread themselves too thin, even in guarding a mage who lit an entire battalion on fire. They’ve stuffed her underneath the town in filthy dungeons with crusted over iron bars. 

The conditions are poor, dank, and sunless. Yennefer sits immobile in the dark. They’ve no worry about her trying to escape because of what lies wrapped around her wrists—dimeritium shackles. 

Tissaia waits for a long while outside of Yennefer’s holding cell, watching for any patterns of the guards lauding over the woman in watch. Detecting none, Tissaia decides there is no greater time than the present. If Yennefer is to be saved, now is as good a time as any. 

She strides toward and down the small walkway, a heavy hood draped over her to cover most of her face and modest body. Lightning bolts could jaggedly exit out of her fingertips. She could roughly shove the long dagger at her hip in each of their jugulars before they even move.

Instead, she decides to use the spell she heard both Coral and Yennefer mutter in her mind, effectively severing the guard’s spinal columns from their heads. They jerk spasmodically and tumble over in a tangle of limbs. 

Picking up the iron gate key, she quickly shuffles and throws it open, practically running to Yennefer and skidding to her knees. The air is stale, dirty. In what little light from the torches there is, she can make out Yennefer’s look of confusion.

She wipes that all away by flinging herself into the woman’s body, grasping her smudged cheeks, and kissing her with every ounce of life and love flowing in her body. Wonderfully, agonizingly, Yennefer returns it. 

Tears form, untamable little things that break from her eyes and create paths down the dirt on Yennefer’s cheeks. She backs away and cups them, looks into the tired lavender eyes she’s missed so. 

Time is of the essence and the reunion will have to play out in more detail later on. Without waiting for a reaction, Tissaia speaks the elder words as she places her hand on the bindings. 

The fire that melts her skin as the shackles do the same is almost unbearable. But dissipate they do as her own flesh suffers the consequences of using this type of fire magic. 

Chaos, always a balance. For what it gives her (Yennefer) it also takes away (her own body). Blood trickles from Tissaia’s nose as the rings of captivity fall away. 

Quickly, she tries to hide the damage she’s done to herself, but Yennefer grabs her by the wrist to examine the effects. 

“You’re so stupid, Tissaia,” she cries and kisses her again. Somehow, her lips make the pain in Tissaia’s hand lessen to imperceptibility. 

“For you, I’d do it a thousand times over,” Tissaia admits. Who cares about a wrecked hand when she’s by Yennefer’s side again?

Not one to squander what she’s gained, she knows there is little chaos left in her. Either enough to do a healing mend or enough to portal her and Yennefer to safety. 

She encourages Yennefer to stand, which she manages on wobbly legs due to disuse. With one final kiss to the other mage’s lips, Tissaia speaks the words to teleport them out of the dungeon, hopefully far away from Etoila.

//—//

Yennefer is running on empty when Tissaia finds her sitting in filth once again. She knows her eyes are sunken, her hair limp and unclean. The burn on her face still hasn’t healed from where she had passed out on a smoldering clump of something or another. She can’t be completely sure when she had incinerated an entire countryside. 

She’s somewhere deep inside of her own mind, a dark and numb place much like her physical surroundings, when a noise sounds from outside the cell. It’s almost like a choking suck of air, the squelching of it disappearing from a throat. 

Jumping back a little, she watches as the body of one guard falls lifeless to the floor and then another only a breath after. 

Then a hooded figure, hunched and slight, is hovering the iron key in the lock, throwing it open and sliding to her through the muck and moistness that’s made its way into the room. 

Yennefer can feel not even a trace of magic because of what’s at her wrists, but she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who is grabbing onto her for dear life the second the small figure is burrowing tightly. 

Surprise begins to overtake her body as lips connect to hers, followed closely behind by a myriad of other emotions: relief, gratitude, overwhelming things that she’s felt her entire life and never uttered to another soul. 

An acrid smell fills her nose as she looks down as the metal is dropping off of her red and angry wrists. Yennefer realizes another scent below all of it too—that of melting flesh. 

Tissaia tries to turn away but not before Yennefer can grab the appendage the woman has sacrificed to do away with the cuffs. Simply put, she’s created a bloody and flaking mess from where the skin is gone. 

“You’re so stupid, Tissaia,” she says but the sight down below makes her heart break. 

The enormity of what Tissaia has done is not lost on her and she kisses her with everything she’s got, the concern over her appearance and where they’re at drifting away. 

She’s _here_. Tissaia is actually here and saving her. Her tired but beautiful face is a sight Yennefer hasn’t seen since she’d been told to let her chaos explode. And explode she had. 

“For you, I’d do it a thousand times over.” The sincerity of it, the way Tissaia’s voice sounds when she says it is like a balm on everything. 

Yennefer’s reserves are slowly returning now that the dimeritium is off of her, but she’s in no shape to do much of anything. Thinking back to the guards, she knows they’re probably running out of time before they’re found out. 

Tissaia pulls her up to her unsteady feet and kisses her squarely again before conjuring a portal and pulling them through. 

//—//

“Where in the world have you landed us,” Yennefer pants as they fall through on staggering limbs. 

Tissaia collapses on the ground with Yennefer tumbling not long after. Yennefer backs away from her clinging hold on Tissaia’s side and looks around. Working to catch her breath and center her thoughts, Tissaia does too. 

Something about the landscape looks familiar, but she can’t pinpoint exactly where they’ve landed. She didn’t have much of anywhere in mind, which could either prove useful or rather brash. She supposes that after many decades, Yennefer has finally worn off on her. 

Judging by their surroundings, she’d hazard a guess as to say they’re still too far south for comfort. There’s plenty of grazing land with rather stale looking grass around but the rocky outcroppings and jagged mountains close by speak of little in the way of shelter. 

Her heart sinks when she inferences they are still incredibly far away from anything she knows well. 

“We need to move and quickly,” Tissaia tries to determine the best way to go. “There’s not much in the way of protection here and we are still nowhere near home.”

She watches Yennefer’s face flicker with something uncategorizable and then it is gone. She nods and stands, offering a hand to help Tissaia to her feet. 

“I can’t risk using another burst of chaos,” Tissaia tries to apologize. 

“I know,” Yennefer agrees darkly. They set out at a brisk walk. “When I was in Aedirn…” her voice plays out a bit as she struggles to say the words. “I was followed, along with the Queen. An assassin had been hired to kill both the newborn daughter and the woman who could not sire an heir.”

Tissaia tsks and shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Yennefer. I wish I had better to offer you now.”

Yennefer’s fingers collide with Tissaia’s as they continue to walk. The mage gives them a squeeze and her purple eyes go soft. “I thought I’d never see the outside of that cell again. This is already better. Seeing you? Like a thousand days in the sun.”

Tissaia tries not to hedge too much into what it all means and what she’s done to get them here. Blinking in and out of existence, risking limb and life, now kissing Yennefer whenever they come together. 

It’s a development that began at Sodden when Yennefer was all measured movements and delicate gestures. Tissaia had allowed Yennefer to kiss her those now many months ago and something felt like it had slid into place. 

The way they’d come together, the things they did that night, didn’t feel like the other times. It wasn’t meeting to extinguish chaos as they had done before, even though Yennefer had never gotten rid of the excess. 

As their bodies had slid against the slick of one another, as their hands had danced across the plains and plateaus of each other’s bodies, Tissaia had felt a piece of herself break off as her thighs had locked around Yennefer’s hips, as she’d hung on to one while simultaneously placing a hand over Yennefer’s heart. 

They’d not had time to speak of what the action had meant, if anything. The army had arrived and with it, no sense of calm or good anymore. 

Careful to guard her thoughts as they walk, still hand in hand, she feels the tight coil in her belly at the thought of being with Yennefer in that way again. The timing is highly inappropriate seeing as how they’re nowhere. 

The inescapable thought will not let go though, the ache pressing in like a needle ready to pop. There is no more reserved chaos detectable in Yennefer. 

“You feel like yourself again,” Tissaia looks at her feet when she says this. “Before...everything.”

Yennefer glances over at her as they walk but says nothing. If she’s thinking about their agreement, what they’ve done together, her face doesn’t show it. 

Tissaia brushes up against Yennefer’s mind, a cat connecting with legs softly. She isn’t exactly staggered back away from it, but she’s not let in either. 

Not one to ever shrink inside of herself, she finds herself doing it now. Her thoughts are jolted when Yennefer grabs her cloak and points at an almost undetectable outcropping behind a wild snarl of brambles. 

Before she can say anything, Yennefer is already tearing at the pointy barbs and vines with her bare hands. Tissaia grimaces a bit, her own hand aches in watching. 

Yennefer shies away when Tissaia goes to look at the damage she’s inflicted on herself when there is enough of a space for them to squeeze inside the now noticeable cave like opening. 

“It’s nothing,” Yennefer dismisses airly. “Besides, I wanted us to almost match.” A grin spreads, but it’s full of weight too. Holding the truth of Tissaia’s ruined hand. 

Tissaia lets the corners of her mouth tug as Yennefer guides her into the cave with a hand on the small of her back. Ever since she has known Yennefer, she’s tried to find a myriad of reasons for why the woman is her polar opposite. 

As Yennefer presses closer, Tissaia closes her eyes and sighs. Once again, the truth of the matter is they’re more matched than Tissaia has ever wanted to admit. 

//—//

“Rest. I’ll keep watch,” Yennefer prompts and points to a smooth surface of the rock inside of the cave. She peels off her cape and then frowns. “It’s seen better days and certainly better smells, but perhaps it can pad the ground along with your own.”

“And where will you find your rest?” Tissaia wonders. 

“I’ve been shackled nonstop for many months,” Yennefer smiles wryly. “I would be restless with trying to gain slumber. It is best I stand watch for the both of us.”

Tissaia unfurls her cloak and lies atop it, curling up a bit after pushing it to make a slight pillow for her head. 

“Then tell me a story so that I may meet it,” Tissaia requests. 

“What?”

“You say that slumber will not find you, but lead me there with a tale so that I may greet it for a while.” Tissaia watches as Yennefer brings her knees to her chest and purses her lips. She huffs a little. Tissaia can’t help but chuckle. “Don’t act as if I’ve asked the impossible of you.”

She bites her lips and burrows further into her cloak when Yennefer swivels her head to look at Tissaia’s form. Yennefer runs her fingers down her face and then back up to her hair, finally resting her arms folded and across her legs. 

Her face goes pensive and she settles into a quiet that Tissaia thinks the woman will never leave. She’d meant to get their minds off of what they’ve come from, but it seems she’s led them back around to what they’ve done.

Because like the knots Tissaia had once created along Yennefer’s body, there is a line of them stringing invisibly from her to Yennefer now. Pinpoints of moments that connect them together. Once impossible things too that Yennefer had the courage to ask Tissaia for.

It’s this she’s ruminating in when Yennefer’s voice begins softly, not a lot of power in her words. 

“There once one a little girl who belonged to nowhere and to no one,” she murmurs. “She traversed the lands, curious and looking for something to create wonder in her eyes that were the color of lilacs.”

Tissaia can’t help but contemplate where this tale might be leading. Yennefer picks at the edge of her ruined dress, shuffles her feet a little under herself. She’s clearly anxious even though she’s already begun. 

“In her travels through the wide and expansive North, she roamed and roamed. It became familiar to her, a place she found she knew after some time. Until one day, she happened upon something that was not familiar. Something she did not know.

“Suddenly, there was a beautiful woman, unlike any she had seen before. Dark hair and sharp bone structure, she was stunning in her flowing midnight silk and snow colored shells adorning her head. The girl was immediately stricken by her.”

Yennefer’s voice trails off, like she’s having to gear herself up for the next part of the story. 

“Does this not have a satisfactory ending?” Tissaia pushes her to continue a little. Or beckons her to stop if the events turn unsavory. 

“Just listen to the story, woman,” Yennefer chides and then continues. “The girl was of the land though, so she could not stay with the regal woman, even though there was a rather unsettling pull to do so. So, she made her way to another spot, another landscape. Yet not once did the shade of blue of the woman’s eyes in the North ever leave her mind.”

Tissaia lets her eyes flicker open to stare at Yennefer. She feels something lurch deeply.

“The pull was magnetic, you see. Years passed and the girl returned to the North time and time again. Always searching to lay eyes upon the goddess she’d once met in the snow. But the woman was elusive and remained out of reach. The girl’s face turned into a woman as another trip came and went. No matter how much time passed, she carried the goddess in her heart. 

“One day, the goddess parted the seam that kept her cloaked from the once girl. The now woman cried, ranted, foamed. She wanted to know why the beautiful woman with the crown of snowy white shells had listened to those cries but never revealed herself. She wanted the goddess to know that her heart had been irrevocably changed and she had loved her the whole time.”

Yennefer quiets at this, the last bit of her sentences sounding strained. Tissaia quivers on the inside and closes her eyes tightly. 

“But in this land of queens and women who belonged to nowhere and nothing, there was also magic. And with a force as misunderstood as that, chaos is bound to occur.”

The wordplay is clever and Yennefer herself is turning out to be a master narrator. Tissaia has to wonder how close this story is to one Yennefer has heard and how much of her own life (theirs) has been superimposed.

“Things were destroyed. Around the woman who belonged to nothing and no one, the world burned. Just when she had lost hope, when she felt death surely pressing its fingers into her flesh, the blue-eyed goddess from the North appeared and pulled the woman from the danger she was in.

“The Queen admitted to the woman the things she had kept at bay. ‘I would give myself to you, would make you my own’ the Queen said. ‘I want you. Will you have me?’ The request seemed lofty coming from a Queen, but she asked anyway. Because she was following the organ in her chest and not the one in her head.”

Yennefer swallows audibly. Her face lets a smile bloom, what comes next seems to warm her. “The now woman couldn’t contain her joy. ‘I am yours and you are mine’ she told the Queen. Their bodies pressed together then, just like their hearts. They tasted the often pushed aside emotions, now no longer at arm’s length.”

Silence envelopes the two of them, only a faint dripping sound somewhere deeper in the cave. Tissaia feels both simultaneously awake and half asleep. Yennefer does not talk for a very long time and Tissaia assumes whatever the ending is, Yennefer doesn’t want to continue. Or assumes that Tissaia has already lost consciousness. 

“And what happened to them then?” Tissaia asks with sleep curling around her voice. “The Queen with shells the color of snow upon her head and the woman with eyes the color of lilacs?” 

Yennefer looks over to Tissaia then and smiles amiably. Shrugs. “Why, they lived happily ever after, of course.” She stills a little. Tissaia loses the battle and Yennefer fades from her vision, instead coming to look at the backs of her own eyes. 

“After all, Tissaia...once upon a time.” 

It’s a quiet whisper of a thing. Tissaia finds the alluded to slumber with the beautiful tale of something close to themselves still a sing-song in her ears. 

//

There is an itching at her palm, something she detects even in her sleep. Not sure she was even thinking of it inside a dream, (of how she may never be able to use it again, the weaving of spells lost on that side) she opens her eyes and looks down quickly, expecting to see the torn and crispy flesh of the burn. 

She stares in surprise, runs her fingers along the mottled but mostly healed skin of her palm. Immediately, she looks up and over, knowing the culprit of why her hand is healed. 

Yennefer is curled up on her side asleep. Or pretending to be. Tissaia shakes her head, rises from her spot and drags both garments over to Yennefer. She settles in beside her, kisses her cheek before laying down again. Wraps her arm around Yennefer to grab her hand with her own that is almost as good as new. 

“Happily ever after,” she whispers and feels Yennefer wiggle closer still.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tissaia and Yennefer get back to Aretuza but not before encountering some bumps along the way

_“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” — Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_

**//—//**

They do not talk about the cave. Of the story Yennefer had told before they both fell asleep. It’s another one of those things that they both understand but don’t feel in the right space to speak about, to utter the implications of it or traverse the line connecting to the place that explains why it matters. 

For several days, they move as fast as their feet will take them, mindful to not use a burst of magic like conjuring a portal for fear of being tracked. 

Yennefer sighs as she watches Tissaia make her way ahead of her. She’s so incredibly tired. What she wouldn’t give for a warm bed, for the comfort of soft sheets and pillows cradling her body. 

For Tissaia to be pressed against her within it, either hotly or just because. Yennefer finds that both are still things she wants, made ever more apparent as she had told the story. 

It had started out based on a myth she’d heard as a small girl. As she had delved deeper into it though, she found herself switching out details without thinking about what she was doing. There had been no thin veil, no allusion. 

They both know why Yennefer told it the way she did. She sighs and wonders how long the two of them will be in this stalemate of not addressing the heaviness of what’s between them. Forever, Yennefer surmises. After all, this is Tissaia de Vries. 

The woman ahead of her jerks her head up suddenly, scanning. Her eyes narrow and then go wide. “Quickly, to the tree line!” she hisses. 

Yennefer has never run so hard in all of her life, halfway there grasping Tissaia’s hand to propel her quicker along as they just manage to make it into a small thicket of brush and foliage. She finds herself shoving Tissaia underneath her, throwing the dingy earth-colored cape over their heads as they lay on the ground.

In the distance but still close enough to hear, horses whinny and Yennefer can make out the quick speech of a flank of men. Nilfgaardian soldiers. Her pulse quickens and her nostrils flare. 

A steadying hand touches her cheek and she snaps her eyes to look at Tissaia. _Remain completely still and they will pass. Do you remember our technique?_

The words filter into her head like a whisper. She blinks, unaware she’d even let Tissaia in. _How could I forget?_ is her withering response, a little haughtier in her head than she intended. 

_Do it with me now then?_

Yennefer closes her eyes, finds herself going back to those points (except the troublesome one) to focus on the now returned chaos. The thrumming of it turns down. Hearing the horses trample away and the shouts of the men retreating don’t hurt either. 

Both she and Tissaia remain huddled together for several moments more, awaiting safety again. As time passes, Yennefer finds herself noticing how those points of focus are all shoved against Tissaia. Flinging off her cape, she meets a disheveled and heavily breathing woman. 

“We need to move again,” Yennefer announces and then climbs off of the slight woman under her. She extends a hand and pulls her up. 

It’s another day before they really have a conversation that consists of more than a few words. 

The terrain changes from the mountains and begins to slope into plains. Cattle walk the grasslands and vines of red grapes sit in lines across some of the landscape. 

Tissaia lets out a labored breath as they take in their surroundings. “We’ve made it to Metinna it seems.” She looks contemplative. “Or what used to be. I suppose it’s just one large swath of Nilfgaard now.”

Still so far from the fucking north. Yennefer wilts. “Let me burn a portal,” she pleads, reaching out to touch Tissaia’s now dirty cloak. It’s odd to see her looking anything but pristine. 

Yennefer can see her jaw working. “No, we cannot risk it.” 

“We are weeks away from the Northern kingdoms by foot. I am still weak and you are exhausted. I say it’s worth a shot,” Yennefer tries. 

“You know as well as I that portals are traceable. I cannot fathom losing you now that I’ve just gotten you back,” Tissaia bites off quickly. They both stop walking and Yennefer turns to look at her with wide eyes. “What I mean is…”

Yennefer doesn’t want to hear the rest. She wants to be in a place where she can escape any and all thoughts of Nilfgaard and the hell she’s been through. She needs something good and gentle and, and...gods, anything that she’s learning represents Tissaia. So stark a contrast to her ideas in the past. 

So against all rhyme or reason, she takes another swift look around before seeing that they are the only souls around for miles. It’s been days since they saw the Nilfgaardian soldiers. 

“Fuck it,” Yennefer mutters and sees Tissaia open her mouth to scream, her eyes blazing with fury at what she could sense Yennefer doing the second the mage thought about it. 

The portal swirls into existence. Yennefer hears Tissaia let out a shrill cry as she’s pulled through the spinning center of it. There will be wrath whenever they land wherever it is the portal is taking them. 

Yennefer doesn’t care. Happily ever after is waiting out there, somewhere. She’s impatient to finally reach it. 

**//—//**

As soon as they fall through, Tissaia is flailing against Yennefer, hitting at her wherever she can manage. Midway through the onslaught of it, she manages to encircle the woman’s wrists and hold them down roughly. Still, Tissaia fights her. 

“Stop, you mad woman!” Yennefer yells. 

“You’re damn right I’m mad!” Tissaia returns in much the same tone. Her chest heaves and her mouth is a thin line of anger. “I told you not to use magic and you did exactly as I bade not to!”

She lunges again, acts like she’s going to draw Yennefer off her balance so she can roll off of her. Because that’s where Tissaia has landed. Thoroughly on top of Yennefer and an agitated little ball of barely contained chaos. 

Being the impish shit she is, Yennefer loves every second. She does her own lunging this time and kisses Tissaia for the first time in days. It’s both wonderful in that she’s touching Tissaia again but also fairly gross in the fact that they both smell to the heavens and haven’t had a proper bath in ages. Although Yennefer would wager that Tissaia’s has been sooner than the last one she had, it’s still not the most romantic. 

“Alright,” Tissaia frowns and wipes at her mouth. “Let’s not do that again until we are home.” She rolls off of Yennefer and lays in the grass. 

A bark of laughter escapes into the air. Yennefer rests her hands on her chest. “And here I was so sure you didn’t want to have your lips on me ever again.”

“What made you think that?”

“Well, we’ve not since the dungeons. I thought it might just be the heat of the moment and the grand potential of dying yet again that set you off.”

Tissaia rolls over then, laying on her side and propping up on her elbow. She stares down with curious eyes. Her hair has been a mess for days. She looks frazzled and still utterly beautiful. 

“The thought of dying always sets me off,” Tissaia reveals. She narrows her eyes then. 

A screeching wail interrupts them and Yennefer swears. “Oh, fuck.”

Behind them, an eyeless and floating wraith is making its way forth. Yennefer spins Tissaia around, works to conjure another portal but finds her chaos thready. The wraith screams, teleports, and then Yennefer feels it’s cold claws rake down her back and its sword whirl around to skewer her. 

The rusted metal of it hits a shield as Yennefer pants out in pain from her knees. Tissaia pushes the shield harder against the wraith as it batters it.

“Fucking White Orchard, am I right?” Yennefer hisses in pain and dark humor. “Don’t have any moon dust or specter oil, do you?”

“Seems I’ve left it in my other cloak,” Tissaia goads but then looks down and smiles. “Let’s go home, my girl.”

Another portal flares. Yennefer can’t even find it in herself to complain about where they’re going. Aretuza suddenly seems like the exact right place to be.

**//—//**

The marks on her back are long, jagged, bloody. The fabric of her dress digs into them, rubs them even rawer. She twists in agony and claws at the shoulders of her garment, wanting to rid herself of it. 

“Calm down, Yennefer.” 

Yennefer dismisses the command and yanks her dress off her body. It sticks on the wounds, some of it embedded into the gashes and she lets out a growl as she steels her gut and rips harshly, freeing it from the shredded skin. 

Tears form at the corner of her eyes and she falls to the floor on her knees, naked and spent after she throws the dress with all her might. 

Her stomach goes concave as she sucks in air. Her torn flesh burns. Which turns into fire as a soft hand lays down upon her skin. Like a needle and thread passing through the skin and knitting together, it feels terrible. 

That’s the thing about healing though. It’s unpredictable depending on the injury. Tissaia’s burn had taken a great amount of chaos in the attempt to heal while also leaving her with a patch of skin that will bear the markers of what she has done forever. 

What Tissaia is doing to Yennefer’s back feels as if she’s peeling off the skin and laying new down, regenerating it to its original form. When it’s over, the pain subsiding, Yennefer flops ungracefully to the tiles of the floor. 

Her cheek hits cool. Tissaia’s voice is a jumbled murmur that somehow manages to soothe still. Yennefer sighs in contentment and closes her eyes, fatigue overtaking her. Finally, they’re home.

**//—//**

She enters the waking world with a bit of delirium still clouding her brain. Nothing hurts, but Yennefer still feels rung out. 

Nearby, a fire crackles. Warmth is all around. Yennefer lets her eyelids flutter. 

Her calming voice comes through the haze. “There was once a rectoress at a school of great esteem that overlooked the rolling sea,” she begins and Yennefer feels the woman’s palm upon her brow, brushing at strands of her hair. She settles with the rhythm of her hand and sighs happily. 

“She roamed the Continent looking for girls to bring within the walls, ones that could bend magic and make that chaos theirs.” Swipe, curl, the rake of Tissaia’s hand. “One bright but chilly day, she followed that trail to find a defiant and curious set of lilac eyes staring up at her.”

Swipe, curl, rake. “And what happened to them then?” Yennefer stands inside of a memory. 

“The girl became a woman more powerful than any in the land.” Silence. 

“And of the Rectoress by the sea?” 

“She was never the same after those piercing lilac eyes.” Yennefer feels Tissaia’s breath tickle at her ear. “She fell and fell and fell.” Her forehead nuzzles against the side of Yennefer’s head. 

Yennefer reaches out with her eyes still closed, wraps her arms, and holds onto the only thing that is dear.


	8. Eight or Clash 5

_ “Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.” — William Goldman, The Princess Bride _

**//—//**

There’s not really a “last” time but a clashing that marks the end of their agreement. The end of it in Tissaia’s mind anyway. 

Yennefer rises from the bed after a day and Tissaia watches the ripple of her muscles under her smooth skin as she stretches her limbs. Tissaia must turn away when Yennefer pulls on a garment. Even though they’ve been together in all of the ways, have kissed in several desperate moments since, she’s not sure what their future holds. 

Or how much Yennefer remembers of her story from the night before. As she works to situate herself, she doesn’t bring it up. Her face is unreadable as she makes her way to where Tissaia sits by the waning fire. 

“You’ll leave soon, I suppose.” She doesn’t speak the words to Yennefer. She cannot trust her face when she says them. 

“I…” Yennefer’s mouth snaps shut. “On the new moon, I guess.”

“Where will you go?” Tissaia has no right to pry on one hand. But on the other, she’s just worked so incredibly hard to get Yennefer back. 

“I will make the pilgrimage to see the names,” Yennefer says quietly. 

Tissaia has already seen the thirteen stone obelisks. Had to read Triss’s name. Was grateful to find her alive. Was also thankful that she kept Yennefer’s from ever being carved. 

“At first light?” 

Yennefer nods tightly. “That would probably be best.”

Tissaia dismisses herself quickly, has to exit the room. It’s hard to walk down the Aretuzan halls with tears in her eyes. 

**//—//**

There’s been no shortage of work to be done since she returned only a day ago. Still, it waits for her. Some part of her is glad for it though. 

She checks the girl's rooms, visits the last classes of the day. Back at her desk, she answers notices and other letters needing her attention. Hours tick away until the light is muted outside of her window, a mixture of oranges, pinks, and blues as the sun retreats. 

Yennefer enters quietly, closes the door with little sound. They’ve not spoken, even telepathically, since Tissaia left the room. She finds it difficult to know what to say now. She’s no good at goodbye. 

She scowls. Bites at the inside of her cheek. Something is off about the woman standing in front of her. 

For weeks, she’s felt like Yennefer again. The one from before with a lot of chaos but using it enough to keep from overflowing. She’s been drained and filled back up these last few days but now, standing here in Tissaia’s study, she resembles the one that teleported into Aretuza with exasperation on her lips and body full of oozing force. 

“What’s wrong?” Tissaia observes, looking her up and down. She rises when she sees Yennefer’s fists clenched at her sides. “Your chaos should still be building. Why does it feel as if you’re close to losing control again?”

She rounds her desk and crosses her hands in her adoptive stance. Her eyes wander over Yennefer further.

“Because I am,” Yennefer confirms. “Losing control again.” Her voice is raspy, guarded. She takes a few slow steps forward. “I speak of leaving and yet the only thing I can think about is you.”

Tissaia cannot help the stutter in her chest, but her outward response is to furrow her brows. “You’ve been leaving my presence for many years, Yennefer. I should think this no different than the others.”

Because it’s also the thing that she has to tell herself. That even though absolutely everything has changed, maybe they can both pretend it’s the same. The problem is, she’s not sure she can be good at pretending anymore. 

“Is that what you feel?”

“I don’t know what I feel,” Tissaia snaps, dropping her hands to her waist. Her voice goes pleading. “I cannot make my way past anything in my mind to arrive at sense.” 

Yennefer clutches her cheeks then, knits her own brows together as she closes her eyes and leans in to rest her head against Tissaia’s face. She places a small, soft kiss there and backs away yet still holds on. 

“Because you refuse to acknowledge the truth, Tissaia. That I’ve been telling you I love you since Novigrad. That I’ve been saying I’m  _ in _ love with you since Sodden.”

“These are the things of dreams, not real life,” Tissaia breathes out the breath she’s been holding.  _ Nothing is the same. It hasn’t been the same in years.  _

“I came to you hoping to find a way to weave a djinn out of me through magic. What I discovered was a way to rid it from my body through falling in love. I didn’t create something that wasn’t already there though. You just uncovered it in me,” Yennefer moves her head back and forth against Tissaia, almost like shaking away the memories of the things she’d like to forget. Like shaking away all that might butt up against her words in disagreement. 

“Love is…”

“The thing we share between us and do not deny it a second more,” Yennefer warns. “That story I told you, the one you told me last night. It’s about all the once upon a times, but damn it all, I want the happily ever afters too.”

Now it is Tissaia’s turn to shake her head. “And you think that  _ I _ could possibly give that to you? We have been here before—in Rinde. Haven’t we?”

“No,” is the firm response. “Because  _ you _ can give me everything.” There’s a grazing kiss now to Tissaia’s throat. “Let me give you everything too.”

The words are a path, a trail out of Tissaia’s study and into her bed chambers. Their dresses fall with desperate ease, pushed skin to skin again. 

Tissaia cradles Yennefer’s head as her own falls back, plump lips nipping at places like they’ve forgotten them. Moving Yennefer to look upward, Tissaia meets purple. 

“If this is to be our last time…” her words become thick. “Make it good.”

Yennefer says nothing but sets to her purpose. Sets to touching Tissaia in old ways like at Sodden and in new ways like there will be a thousand tomorrows of the two of them. 

The woman is slow in her movements, reserved in a way Tissaia never thought possible. She feels revered, held up on that pedestal Yennefer had once accused her of being on. Only now she’s looking down and it’s just Yennefer that she can see. 

If this is truly to be the end of things, it doesn’t change the way their touches land on one another. Both women walk their hands along each other’s bodies as if time were infinite. As if Yennefer doesn’t have departing in her heart. 

Their kisses are languid but full of things that need to pass between them. Tissaia has never been good with emotion, at least vocalizing it. One could even argue that her actions are often remiss of them too. 

The thought now makes her sad a little and it must be detectable because Yennefer moves her lips across Tissaia’s skin in some form of reassurance that even though she had broken Yennefer to pieces, she had given her the things to rebuild again. 

“You made me my own woman. Taught me to be independent before I could belong to anyone else. Now I can only see that being you,” Yennefer says between kisses. “A thousand times over.”

“It made you hate me for many years,” Tissaia brushes Yennefer’s hair out of her eyes. She never wants to lose them again.

“I think I needed to hate you in order to love you. I think I’m only capable of making things grow from darkness,” Yennefer works through the thoughts. “You’re the only thing that kept me sane in that dungeon in Etolia. I’d think of you from when I was young and get a smile when I’d remember how incensed you’d get when I would disobey you or how I’d steal glances at you when you were teaching. To try and see something none of the other girls saw. 

“Or how I had felt when you agreed to help me work through my chaos from the djinn. Of how gorgeous you looked on your knees and how wonderful you’ve always felt against me—whether it was soothing my hair in front of a mirror before my enchantment or feeling you at my back in Rinde or underneath me and atop me at Sodden. Tissaia, you occur in me over and over. You are endless.”

“As are you in me,” Tissaia admits. What’s left to run from? Yennefer has cracked her chest open wide. The truth of what she feels for the woman sliding down her body with kisses punctuating the trek has probably been apparent to anyone with eyes for the last several decades. 

And it’s a confusing thing—how love manages to find a person. It’s never really expected. Hardly goes the way it should. Usually wrecks someone completely before making them feel whole. 

Doubt, fears, passion. The ability to fall apart when control has been continually practiced. When one has tried so hard not to lose themselves. 

Centuries, Tissaia has had. Years upon decades to learn the language of love, to the giving and receiving it. But even as Yennefer’s tongue drags across the obviousness of Tissaia’s body’s physical response to everything the woman is, she still finds it hard to believe that this is something she gets to have. 

Because she had only meant to teach Yennefer a lesson, one about the fine line between restraint and having it all. But it’s like Yennefer said—what began as a djinn and something she didn’t know how to become a part of is now nothing about the creature that took hold of Yennefer’s body and had her seeking Tissaia’s help. Tissaia’s own form has been latched on to. She’s fine with being consumed.

And judging by the way Yennefer’s head moves as she slides up and down the expanse of Tissaia’s most intimate of areas,  _ devour _ is an adequate word. To be taken apart like this, to have never known she wanted to be until Yennefer presented the idea, is it’s own type of story too.

She palms at her breast as Yennefer palms her hips, moves them in such a way as to meet her mouth. Had she done this thorough of a job on Yennefer at Oxenfurt? Has anyone ever touched Tissaia like this at all?

Perhaps she’s glamorizing it, making it hold more weight than it should. Her past though is nothing compared to her present, can’t even hold a candle to what burns deeply now. 

The same fire that lights her up from the inside out has that heat twisting inside her belly and rising from between her thighs. That line that’s connected her and Yennefer since perhaps the beginning, the one she’s shoved away or ignored, is about to be tugged as she moves along to float in a current of euphoria. 

Tissaia brushes a thumb over Yennefer’s cheek as she clenches, thrusts her hips forward in an effort to meet her body’s will, of it wanting to be as close to Yennefer as it can humanly get. To maybe not just be skin against skin, but soul touching soul. 

Inside her chest, her heart works overtime. It feels as if it will break through and out, doing its own work to keep up with what Yennefer has given her. Finally, it slows to its normal rhythm and Tissaia looks down her body to where Yennefer’s head rests, cheek pressed against naked hip.

She raises up then, head first, and then using her palms to push her up and over Tissaia. As she comes to hover, Tissaia can just make out the slick between the woman’s legs, the effect of what her mouth has done. 

They’ve not reciprocated anything with each other since Sodden. That hell of a place now but what was once so full of hope and faith and fear and love the night before Yennefer set the world on fire and Tissaia gained one inside her lungs. 

“Lie down,” Tissaia whispers out the command. Yennefer does as she’s told. For once. For maybe the beginning of more. 

Her lips travel then, attach to all of the places they never knew to go. To the upper quadrant of a bicep, the dips between Yennefer’s ribs, the side of her knee. Tissaia creates little touches with her mouth that feel like the building of a world.

Or maybe the continuation of one. Maybe she’s become this entire someone else out of the loneliness she’s kept at bay most of her life. Of the ache she has felt when there’s been nothing but silence and herself. 

Has she given herself to Yennefer because of this? Because of the neverending void of needing something greater but tossing it away?

She cannot arrive at an answer no matter which way she turns it. To want to feel alive but be afraid of what risks are involved in falling. To want to show herself to someone, someone who can reciprocate the feelings that have always seemed so complicated. To have it not feel wrong or as if she’s been walking through life as a husk. 

So this thing that’s happened time and time again with Yennefer, the thing that’s been there but not discussed—maybe that’s who Tissaia truly is. Not the hardened sorceress. Not the impenetrable rectoress. Not the woman who has chosen a quiet life because no one else would understand the depth of her heart. 

No, maybe she is the woman who fell in love with another one. Perhaps she’s the one that has always felt rearranged by Yennefer of Vengerberg, the one who loves her with every beat of her heart in her chest. It’s got to be this that matters and absolutely what no one else thinks or believes. 

She proves this with every swirl of her tongue, a horsehair brush on the finest canvas. Tissaia nestles between Yennefer’s legs, delicately runs a hand through the dark patch she finds, the surprising softness of it as she moves her fingers over it. 

On the inhale, she feels an emotion she’s felt so little in her life: that of pure joy. She works her mouth against Yennefer, incandescently happy despite what may come. This, the moment being created, is too blissful living inside of to be distraught about its inevitable end. 

A tug at her hair, firm and bordering on too hard, lets her know she’s achieved success again (just like the first time. But different. No burst of chaos, only the rolling waves of it now). As does the pulsing of Yennefer against her lips. 

Tissaia nuzzles the curve of Yennefer’s thigh after, is hesitant to rid her face of what the woman has left behind. She does though, turning her blue-gray eyes upward to check on Yennefer. 

If it were possible to fall any more, Tissaia would. But she’s already at the bottom or maybe at the tip-top? This love thing is so new, she’s unsure of where she stands, only that it’s beside Yennefer and with her and that Yennefer is all around. 

“The thing about fairy tales is that they do not exist,” Tissaia whispers against the olive of Yennefer’s skin, presses kisses where her mouth breathes air. 

“Then tell me what we’re living right now,” Yennefer pushes back in dispute. Her fingers run through Tissaia’s loose hair, glide down her cheeks to try and bring her closer to her face. 

“It’s hard to speak it. I fear that if I do, it will leave me and I will be alone again.” She’s never spoken this in her entire life, not once. 

She’s had girls sit year after year in front of one another, beckoning them to draw forth one another’s deepest fears while she has never had the humility or fortitude to do so with her own. 

Because unlike Yennefer’s deep-seated concerns that even with beauty, she would be absent the affection of someone’s heart, (it’s unfounded. Always has been. Tissaia loved her when her spine was bent and her soul was miraculous. She’s okay with this now, finally) Tissaia has carried the heft of her own greatest unease—that even though she might learn to love someday, she would lose them. And she would be alone again.

She’s tried to temper this by living a solitary life but ever since Yennefer first suggested the agreement, ever since Tissaia actually found herself participating, it’s a life she never wants to go back to. Because you can still fear something and be experiencing it. 

“If books do not make things true, perhaps living it does,” Yennefer concedes. “So believe in this. In you and me and us.”

“Right,” Tissaia breaks into a smile. “Once upon a time, correct?”

“Mmm,” Yennefer kisses Tissaia, pressing their bodies closer together. “But now we are to happily ever after.”

“And what happens from here on out then?” 

Yennefer rolls Tissaia underneath her. “It never ever ends.”

Tissaia supposes it is a tale she can learn to believe in. Yennefer is very much the best kind of story now. “I love you,” she tells Yennefer, and just like that, both of their fears cease to exist. 

Even though Yennefer may leave to see the names, she will be back not long after. She will keep coming back, over and over again. Tissaia knows this just as sure as both of their hearts beat. Perhaps, maybe, dreams do come true. 


End file.
